Nearly there ! I will be submitting my paper for academic scrutiny ( and marking ) this week. I have really enjoyed and learnt from undertaking this work in depth and working with the academic staff at the University of Galway. When appropriate I will share the paper on this website in full . The next step after this to submit for a leading journal publication. This paper adds to my ability and capabilities on working closely with food businesses on their journey of “mitigation and adaptation “ in climate change .
A brief summary is below
Mitigation for Climate Change cannot happen without a transformation in business operational models. In a free-market economy this change is directed and driven by stakeholder choice. Consumers concerned about green issues will use their spending power to acquire products from, or invest in, businesses with high green credentials. In turn this makes these businesses more successful and green practices become dominant, a fundamental transformation occurs. To enable this, there must be transparent accessible information for stakeholders to judge how green a business is, to direct their purchasing decisions. In this paper we sought to look at EU sustainability reporting though a legal lens with two clear objectives. First to assess if the EU legal reporting requirements laid down in the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) match the commitments made by the EU to mitigate climate change. And secondly, to determine how effective these reports are in practice for stakeholders. We found that there was a significant alignment of the reporting requirements of CSRD to the EU’s climate commitment. However, there was legally flexibility given and a wide variability found on how this information was presented in a business sustainability statement. This was concerning and means the reporting requirements, whilst certainly improved in the past 2 years, are not totally reliable and the risk of greenwashing remains. It is suggested stakeholders should rely on established 3rd party sustainably reports carried out on businesses for informed investment and purchasing decisions not exclusively on reports issued by the business themselves.