Climate Disclosure Standards: Who Should Set Them?

As evidence continues to mount that climate change poses significant financial and environmental threats to companies, and as calls for climate and racial justice have swept the globe, investors have stepped up their demand for better information about how the companies they invest in are addressing environmental, social, and governance (ESG) concerns. For years, investors have relied nearly exclusively on voluntary reporting efforts to meet those demands, and a rich and varied ecosystem of reporting frameworks, standards, and independent standard setters has grown up in response. While these voluntary standards have played an important role in the evolution of ESG reporting, they have not produced the consistent, reliable, comparable, decision-useful information that investors need to effectively incorporate ESG considerations into their investing and voting decisions.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is currently considering whether it will require U.S. companies to provide ESG disclosures to investors, and one of the key issues it must confront is whether, how, and to what extent it should rely on the work of private sector, third-party standard setters in developing, implementing, and enforcing those rules.

Please join the Center for American Progress, the Consumer Federation of America, and the UC Hastings Center for Innovation for a panel discussion on the legal and policy merits of SEC deference to third-party ESG standard setters.

Thursday, October 28, 2021 - 12:00 pm (U.S./Eastern)