Deakin Law School and the Centre for Law as Protection has a special guest: Professor Virginia Harper Ho will be delivering our lunchtime seminar on Corporate Climate Governance.
Corporate Climate Governance
Virginia HARPER HO
Professor, City University of Hong Kong School of Law, Co-Director of the Centre for Public Affairs and Law (CPAL).
Professor Harper Ho is an expert on corporate law and governance, securities regulation, and sustainability from a comparative perspective. She is a Research Member of the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI), an Associate Editor of the American Journal of Comparative Law, and is also a former Research Fellow of the International Institute of Green Finance (IIGF) at the Central University of Finance and Economics (CUFE) in Beijing. She is a Fellow of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations’ Public Intellectuals’ Program and has been studying China and Chinese legal reform for several decades. Prior to joining the faculty of City University of Hong Kong in 2021, she was an Earl B. Shurtz Research Professor and the Associate Dean for International and Comparative Law Programs at the University of Kansas School of Law (USA). She holds a JD from Harvard Law School (with honors) and a B.A. and M.A. from Indiana University (Bloomington) (USA).
Corporate Climate Governance: The severity and urgency of the climate crisis has led governments worldwide to adopt mandatory corporate reporting for climate-related risks. While standards in Europe go further and ask companies to report on their own climate impacts, all of these regimes require the largest companies to monitor and report the effects of climate risk on the company itself and to disclose greenhouse gas emissions. All of these climate disclosure mandates — even in their narrowest form — also require companies to identify and also prioritize specific stakeholder factors as a matter of corporate governance.
This Article begins by analyzing the corporate governance implications of climate-risk disclosure with reference to U.S. law, given the narrow approach of the U.S. disclosure rules and the historically strong influence of U.S. law and practice on corporate governance theory. It begins by distinguishing “thin” and “thick” conceptions of “corporate climate governance” based on emerging international climate reporting standards. It then makes the case that corporate climate governance in both “thin” and “thick” forms addresses the central criticisms of stakeholder-oriented corporate governance rules, which are grounded in agency cost and efficiency concerns. This Article offers a foundation for future empirical research on what may soon become the “new normal” of corporate governance for firms across otherwise divergent jurisdictions.
Available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4934244.
Date and Time:
Monday, February 10. 12-2 pm
Location:
Deakin Downtown
Register on Eventbrite:
https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/lunchtime-seminar-corporate-climate-governance-by-virginia-harper-ho-tickets-1206153079329?aff=oddtdtcreator
Share