EcoClimate and ESG Disputes: Practice, Risks, Prospects

Abstract

The ecoclimate or «green» agenda, largely constituted through the concept of «sustainable development» and the system of ESG standards, has captured the world and is changing society, generating new social patterns, and ceasing business and management models. This encourages rethinking the legal superstructure, adapting new regulatory arrays to the current legal taxonomy, which is not always possible, taking into account the positivist approach to law and a significant amount of «soft» law rules and sources of non-state regulation within the framework of «green» regulation. The ecoclimate agenda has a number of dimensions in the context of law and jurisprudence, one of which is the practice of ecoclimate and ESG disputes, often of a cross-border nature. Very little attention is paid to this issue in the Russian research space, while the volume of relevant lawsuits in the world is growing rapidly. The object of the study within the framework of this work covers the risk-oriented nature of the above-mentioned issues, the licensing risks of mainly cross-border contracts, the assessment of companies’ activities in the field of sustainable development in the context of possible judicial or arbitration proceedings. The paper provides a classification of ecoclimate and ESG disputes, gives examples of judicial and arbitration practice, and makes some conclusions regarding mitigation of litigation risks generated by the companies’ activities.