The Commonwealth Climate and Law Initiative (CCLI) has just published “Fiduciary Duties and Climate Change in the United States” by Sarah Barker, Cynthia Williams, and Alex Cooper. This is an extremely important report for reasons I will explain. The CCLI is a UK-based NGO which works with leading academic institutions (e.g., the University of Oxford), corporate law firms (e.g., MinterEllison), and civil society organizations (e.g., ClientEarth). The focus of the CCLI is to analyze board directors’ legal obligations regarding climate change and to disseminate its findings in order to increase directors’ understanding and to improve their ability to fulfill their fiduciary duty.

The CCLI and its partners have previously published papers based on company law for Australia, Canada, India, Japan, Singapore, and South Africa. Working with the Climate Governance Initiative, a project launched in collaboration with the World Economic Forum, the CCLI has also published a Primer covering 21 jurisdictions. Ellie Mulholland, Director of the CCLI, explained: “In every jurisdiction that our legal experts looked at, they came to the same view: boards must rethink their legal duties in light of climate change. But there was still this nagging misconception that this wouldn’t apply to the US, that a Delaware director could never be sued for what they do or don’t do about climate change. This report should put that misconception to rest.”

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