Tag: board oversight of climate risk

Corporate GovernanceESGSecurities

How are boards addressing sustainability?

With regulators in the U.S. and around the world looking hard at the possibility of imposing sustainability disclosure requirements, and investors and other stakeholders continuing to focus on sustainability in their engagements with companies—according to a PwC survey, “ESG is the topic investors most want to discuss during engagements with shareholders”—one question that arises is just what corporate boards are doing to deal with sustainability—what are their attitudes and commitments? Are they even prepared to address sustainability issues? In an article reporting on a 2022 survey by consulting firm Russell Reynolds (published on the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance), the firm tried to answer these questions. One conclusion from the survey: “Rather than having a sole ‘ESG director’ or ‘sustainability director,’ expectations are increasing for the entire board to bring a minimum level of sustainability awareness—if not expertise—to their work, using it to identify both risks and new opportunities for value creation.”

/ July 25, 2022
Corporate GovernanceESG

SSGA provides guidance for board oversight of climate risk

As noted in the proxyseason blog from thecorporatecounsel.net, asset manager State Street Global Advisors has recently published an updated Climate Change Risk Oversight Framework For Directors. Climate change is identified as a continuing priority for SSGA’s asset stewardship and company engagement program. In the commentary introducing the framework, SSGA advises that boards should look at climate change “as they would any other significant risk to the business and ensure that a company’s assets and its long-term business strategy are resilient to the impacts of climate change.”  A similar view was expressed by the NACD in Board Oversight of ESG, which advises that “climate-related risks must be integrated into the company’s ongoing risk assessment and quantification processes and the board’s oversight of risk management.”

/ June 4, 2019