Institutional Entrepreneurship and Climate Change

Private regulatory governance systems are the norm in the contemporary global economy (Bartly, 2022) .Private regulatory systems, including voluntary efforts by firms to restrain their own behavior including systems that target business operations ranging from environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting and carbon accounting, to certification schemes for sustainable agriculture, fisheries, forestry practices and more, are the primary form of global environmental governance.Since the Paris Agreement in 2015, international treaties, including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) -first negotiated in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 -have largely relied on the private sector and its willingness to voluntarily combat climate change.The role of the financial sector has been seen as crucial in this regard (Ciplet & Roberts, 2017Stephen & Ekins, 2019) .An assessment of this reliance on private regulation is contested.It has been seen as exercising a role in pressuring business to green their operations, including mitigation of greenhouse gases.Critics have argued that it has enabled firms to use modest private regulations as a political strategy to pre-empt or delay more stringent public regulations.The aim of this working paper is to provide a business history perspective on this issue.It will examine the historical foundation and evolution of private sector initiatives in global climate governance, and to explore why this happened.It will explore how far this private regulation represents a significant, if incremental, attempt by corporations to reduce their negative impact on climate change, and how it should be seen as forms of corporate greenwashing, green-hushing and transition-washing. 1