How to Set Up Effective Climate Governance on Corporate Boards Guiding principles and questions

On the one hand, good governance should intrinsically include effective climate governance. To this point, climate change is simply another issue that drives financial risk and opportunity, which boards inherently have the duty to address with the same rigour as any other board topic. On the other hand, climate change is a new and complex issue for many boards that entails grappling with scientific, macroeconomic and policy uncertainties across broad time scales and beyond board terms. In this regard, general governance guidance is not necessarily sufficiently detailed or nuanced for effective board governance of climate issues.

 

This work seeks to provide useful guidance to boards, acknowledging that climate governance is both integral to basic good governance and fraught with complexity. The result is a set of principles and questions to guide the development of good climate governance – designed to help the reader practically assess and debate their organization’s approach to climate governance and frame their thinking about how the latter could be made more robust.