Despite its good reputation as a role model for mitigating climate change and protecting the environment, Norway is failing on many fronts, argues Professor Beate Sjåfjell in this blog post.
Blogging for Sustainability - Page 3
Enforceable regulation that ensures businesses internalize their externalities is urgently needed if we are to meet the challenge of sustainability, writes SMART researcher Mark Taylor at the University of Oslo.
There are contradictions between promises and outcome in environmental law. One of them is that international environmental law promises that environmental problems can be solved through the participation of all, yet some actors in practice exercise a stronger influence on legislative procedures and decision making than others.
New modes of existing in the world take time to develop. This is clear throughout the history of the law. It is also a mode of thinking about responsibility and sustainability that is making its way into company and securities law. It is increasingly the case, for example, that directors and investors are expected to have regard for the ‘long term’ when pursuing their actions and interventions. In the UK, section 172 of Companies Act 2006 (CA 2006), the Corporate Governance Code (now 2018), and the Stewardship Code (2012) are examples of instruments that mark out longer temporal horizons and counsel patience.
When is the right time to act on the environment? The environmental activities of the business sector and their governance, especially in regard to climate change, have crucial temporal dimensions. As I argued in my book Time and Environmental Law (Cambridge University Press, 2017), which investigates this topic in depth, time is important because it enables us to measure change and thereby to understand the relationship between events over temporal intervals. As the world changes, we need to know when to respond to that change or to initiate change. Timing is thus a navigational tool for regulators, business managers and other actors to help determine the most appropriate occasion to act.
Blogging for Sustainability
Sustainable Market Actors for Responsible Trade (SMART) brings together researchers who focus on global, sustainable development, within the planetary boundaries.
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