This report examines current legal frameworks for institutional investors in 11 countries, including the EU, UK, US, Canada, Japan, and Australia and how they link financial returns with sustainability. It finds that in many cases, investors are legally required to consider sustainability if it aligns with financial goals. The report also recommends policy changes to clarify fiduciary duties and make it easier for investors to prioritize sustainability by fostering clearer guidelines and collaboration 

Urges business to include climate policy advocacy aligned with their sustainability strategies. Advocates for science-based climate actions, including supporting legislation aligned with the 1.5°C temperature limit and achieving net-zero emissions by 2050, emphasizing the importance of lobbying efforts aligning with these objectives.    

The report reframes ESG and social purpose from optional extras to strategic essentials—rooted in fiduciary duty, risk oversight, and long-term resilience. It gives boards a practical path to lead on systemic challenges by aligning incentives, embedding preparedness into planning, and focusing capital on future-facing risks.

This article explains why major banks are abandoning the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, arguing that economics—not politics—drives the retreat. Despite political backlash, fossil fuels remain highly profitable and low-carbon transitions costly. The authors warn that banks’ short-term incentives and siloed risk management ignore long-term climate risks, exposing investors and markets to systemic instability and stranded assets. 

This annual survey of over 300 global businesses across 50+ countries assesses how the private sector is acting on the net-zero transition, identifying where policy, investment, and system conditions are speeding or slowing progress. It flags how geopolitical volatility and regulatory uncertainty are influencing corporate decisions and how business sees its role in system-wide transformation.

This case examines the challenges multinationals face in pursuing B Corp certification, using Danone as an example. It highlights aligning global operations, governance, and stakeholder engagement with rigorous social and environmental standards, and raises the broader question: What is responsible influence on public policy for companies that have committed to sustainability? 

Outlines a structured framework for CEOs to disclose 3–5 year strategic plans—financial and non-financial—to long-term investors, helping align sustainability, purpose, and market-facing strategy while demonstrating material impact on stock performance and investor confidence.

This CEO-focused briefing summarizes the Business Breakthrough Barometer’s global findings, highlighting executive insights on transition readiness, policy uncertainty, geopolitical friction, and system transformation. It distills what CEOs see as the barriers and accelerators to achieving net-zero, circularity, and nature-positive systems—and clarifies where business seeks clearer policy, capital signals, and collaborative pathways. 

Ceres’ 10-point plan calls for the insurance industry to lead in addressing climate-related financial risks. It outlines actions spanning disclosure, pricing reform, equitable access, and climate-resilient infrastructure, positioning insurers as advocates for systemic resilience and decarbonization. The roadmap aligns with CPR principles by linking fiduciary responsibility, transparency, and social equity to long-term system stability. 

This analysis reports how climate change acts as a macroeconomic risk multiplier—exacerbating inflation, supply-chain stress, asset re-pricing, sovereign risk, and financial fragility. It argues that businesses and regulators must treat climate as a cross-cutting systemic issue, not simply an environmental add-on, because the economic implications span sectors, geographies and time horizons.

Conducting corporate climate policy engagement positively and appropriately is critical to creating the conditions that will enable a company to achieve its net zero transition.  This briefing, produced by the Climate Governance Initiative in collaboration with the global think tank InfluenceMap, highlights the key issues that board directors should be aware of.  

This report argues that the private sector has an indispensable and influential role in achieving a future free of racial and economic inequality in the US. Outlines guidelines to help business leaders and stakeholders articulate the need for corporate priorities on equity.

Recognizing that climate-related risks are complicated, this brief disaggregates climate risks into three categories (planetary, economic, and financial) to then map those risks to which stakeholders are best positioned to address them. The article explains the importance of this disaggregation to facilitate intended outcomes and avoid unintended consequence. 

ESRS G1 sets mandatory disclosure requirements on business conduct, covering corporate culture, supplier relationships, anti-corruption and bribery, whistleblower protection, political influence and lobbying, and payment practices, especially toward SMEs. It links governance and conduct to impact, risk, and opportunity management, making companies explain how business behavior supports transparent, sustainable practices for all stakeholders. 

This briefing is the first in a series that applies effective corporate climate engagement to a particular sector - in this case, transportation. The brief provides five key facts board directors need to know about corporate climate policy engagement in relation to road transport; a snapshot of the current policy and corporate advocacy landscape for road transport and five steps board directors can take to support effective corporate climate policy engagement in the automotive and trucking industries.

Resources for the Future's new series, If/Then, focuses on providing rapid, independent economic insights on the consequences of policy choices, drawing from both new and prior research. In a highly polarized environment, it aims to fill critical information gaps by making credible evidence accessible in real time to policymakers, businesses, and stakeholders navigating fast-moving debates.

This article presents a framework leaders can use to better focus their sustainability strategies. It consists of four lenses: the business value lens (What affects our bottom line?), the stakeholder influence lens (What are people trying to tell us?), the science and technology lens (What does the data tell us about our impact and future?), and the purpose lens (What do we stand for?). The framework is intended to help leaders balance external pressures with internal priorities and objective data with stakeholder perceptions. 

This report outlines how corporate greenwashing tactics have become more sophisticated, shifting from exaggerated claims to subtler misrepresentations and legal obfuscation. It highlights emerging regulatory gaps, critiques industry self-regulation, and calls for more robust public accountability frameworks to ensure environmental claims align with actual business practices. 
 

Eccles draws on a survey of 884 sustainability experts in 72 countries, which finds that NGOs’ go-to tactics—such as boycotts, litigation, and public shaming—are seen as low-impact and risk fueling backlash. It points instead to higher-leverage strategies like policy advocacy, education, and constructive engagement with skeptics as more effective paths forward.

The Long-Term Stock Exchange (LTSE) listing standards include expectations that companies will take responsibility for long-term decision-making across strategy, governance, executive compensation, stakeholder engagement, and investor relations. These standards are designed to help businesses build sustainable value over time for all stakeholders, rather than focusing on short-term gains, allowing investors to better assess long-term capital investments.

Authored by the Energy Transitions Commission, representing a wide array of perspectives, this report proposes a pathway to a net-zero global economy by mid-century. Specifically, it outlines three priorities for the 2020s: scaling proven zero-carbon solutions, creating supportive policy and investment environments, and advancing next-generation technologies for hard-to-abate sectors. It emphasizes practical actions for governments, investors, and businesses and stresses global collaboration to meet climate targets.

This article argues that Modern Portfolio Theory falls short in today’s interconnected and complex risk landscape, calling for “system-level investing” that integrates social, environmental, and economic factors to boost long-term resilience and sustainability.

Highlights key factors required to refocus capitalism on long-term inclusive growth, including specific practices and policies that businesses should support. (See pg 5-13)

This framework assists companies in reporting both direct and indirect climate policy engagements aligning advocacy with science-based targets and the Paris Agreement. It provides a structured format for reporting to stakeholders—like investors, NGOs, and regulators—clarifying the company’s role in influencing climate policy and improving accountability. 

As companies face increased pressure to advocate publicly for robust climate policies, this WRI report outlines three internal and four external barriers, including org charts and quarterly reports as well as trade associations and political winds, that present the biggest hurdles to implementation, and suggests ways to overcome them.

Urges corporate leaders to stay the course on climate action, integrating sustainability into core governance and fiduciary duties. Strine offers a critique of anti-ESG backlash as inconsistent with capitalism and argues that long-term climate leadership protects workers, investors, and the economy.

This report uses the UN SDGs to assess U.S. sustainability progress, highlighting where the country is falling short—especially on inequality, climate, and declining trust in institutions. It emphasizes that public expectations are rising, and urges businesses to align with enduring values and evolving customer priorities through transparency, collaboration, and long-term strategy.

This paper shows how applying fiduciary duty to investors can bridge the gap to common-sense climate action by helping overcome the collective action problem that often slows climate-aligned investment. By recognizing climate and nature risks as financially material, investors can shift from passive market participants to active actors in the clean economy transition, reducing systemic risks and aligning portfolios with long-term climate goals

This report provides historical context on how business–government dynamics have contributed to rising inequality and public distrust, and invites business leaders to rethink their role in helping restore trust and shape a more inclusive, sustainable capitalism.

This article introduces the concept of “net positive advocacy,” which involves working with partners to advocate for policy that supports systemic solutions and net positive outcomes for all competitors. This requires courage and a shift in mindset, but actually helps de-risk both sustainable business strategies AND political interactions for companies. Their Readiness Test tool provides a useful conversation starter about the change in mindset required. 

This guide offers companies a research-backed climate communication strategy that emphasizes materiality over morality—framing climate action as a business necessity, not just ethical responsibility. Drawing on extensive surveys and focus groups from the US and abroad, it outlines how to connect with skeptical audiences by stressing the concrete, economic benefits of climate initiatives. 

This guide outlines nine clear pathways—like net-zero emissions, circular economy, and inclusive societies—across key sectors including energy, mobility, food, and manufacturing, providing businesses a strategic roadmap to embed sustainability in governance and operations for a thriving 2050 within planetary limits.

In a major refresh of its Vision 2050, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development argues that the decade ahead is critical if we are to achieve “9+ billion people living well within planetary boundaries.” They highlight the need to shift political and economic incentives that push companies into short-term behaviors that undermine societal or environmental systems, and propose a new CPR-driven mindset where firms align all policy influence activities to purpose statements and sustainability goals, partner to generate new policy ideas and help ensure relevant stakeholders are at the table.

This report examines the economics of action and inaction on climate, energy and the environment, and finds that failing to limit global warming to below 2°C could reduce cumulative global GDP by 15% to 34% by 2100. Conversely, the analysis suggested that investing 1% to 2% of global GDP in mitigation and adaptation efforts would significantly reduce these economic damages. They conclude that the net cost of inaction—climate change impacts minus the cost of action—is estimated at 11% to 27% of cumulative GDP, underscoring the economic imperative for proactive climate and energy strategies.

The Framework on transformational governance provides guidelines to help companies deepen business values and strategies, policies and operations and internal and external relationships. The Framework applies to corporate functions from government relations and public affairs to legal and compliance and focuses due diligence processes applied to investment risks and opportunities and environmental and social considerations. The Framework helps to better align governments, civil society and businesses towards a common agenda of leaving no one behind. 

This updated guide from the Dutch central bank provides supervisory expectations for financial institutions regarding climate and nature-related risks. It emphasizes governance frameworks, scenario analysis, nature-risk taxonomy, disclosures, and integration of biodiversity/natural-capital concerns alongside climate. It indicates how insurers, banks and asset-managers must incorporate natural-system dependencies into risk frameworks and corporate strategy. 

The book opens by establishing the minimum expectation that businesses support the right rules of the game—those rewarding long-term value creation rather than destruction—and shows how companies can live their values through cross-sector collaboration, eco-efficiency, and strategies advancing prosperity, planet, and people, supported by real-world cases.