Legal Accountability for Corporate Targets on Environmental and Social Impacts
November 2025
Citation:
55
Issue
6
Beginning in the 2010s, corporations began making voluntary commitments to reduce carbon emissions, improve labor practices, and promote diversity and inclusion. These commitments shape consumer behavior, attract investors conscious of environmental, social, and governance factors, and enhance corporate reputations, yet remain largely unenforceable. This Article addresses this critical and timely gap in environmental governance. Drawing on consumer protection, securities regulation, fiduciary duty, treaty law, and due diligence frameworks, it demonstrates how current regimes reinforce legal voluntarism, and proposes a concrete legal pathway to ensure that corporate commitments produce measurable, enforceable outcomes.