van Berings had the pleasure to attend the Law & Governance Day 2021 hosted by the University of Glasgow during COP26

​Glasgow, Nov. 5 – Climate Law & Governance Day 2021 during COP26 

The COP26 is still running in Glasgow under the spotlight of media and public opinion, and the international debate on climate change is getting tougher as days come by. Meanwhile, following the Pre-Conference on Climate Law and Public Policy organized by the University of Cambridge last week, further inspiring considerations on the role of law and lawyers within climate change mitigation came up during the Law & Governance Day 2021, hosted by the University of Glasgow on November 5. 

One of the core topic touched during the Conference was the role of finance, and in particular private finance, in pursuing sustainability-related goals. In fact, a key issue is to incentivize the private sector to engage with UN 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda and, specifically, with SDG 13 (i.e. Climate Action). In such scenario, the role played by the legal world is fundamental. 

On one side, carbon finance should be leveraged as an incentive mechanism to cut GHGs emissions, and in order to do that some legal interventions are required, specifically to regulate the transferability within the market of GHGs emissions’ rights. 

On the other side, in order to channel private capital towards sustainable ventures, sustainability-related finance should be nurtured. From a legal perspective, it would be necessary to arrange investible financial instruments and projects, de-risking strategies, as well as to raise investors’ awareness on such kind of investments. Not only private investors should be involved, in fact, to support the implementation of green projects also in developing countries, some private-public blend finance should be mobilized. 

Among some insightful interventions on corporate governance-related issues, some words were also dedicated to the feasibility of companies’ commitments towards sustainability. In fact, it was noted how the current trend for companies is to set long-term sustainability goals (i.e. 10-20 years), while the average lifetime of directors’ office is 5 years. In order to be realistic, and assure companies will actually commit to achieve such sustainability goals, it would be advisable to target short-term sustainability goals consistently with directors’ office lifetime. 

We look forward to seeing how COP26 negotiations will end and how such topics on green finance and governance will be taken into account at international and domestic level in the future.