Climate change, Environmental sustainability and the corporate purpose

Climate change and environmental sustainability-related issues are increasingly regarded as potentially having an impact also on the corporate purpose. Since climate change and environmental degradation are – also – a man-made phenomenon, certainly capable to affecting human communities and activities without any geographical restraints, common efforts are needed to effectively fight them. On these grounds, both financial and non-financial institutions should proactively contribute to the solution of such problems. Nevertheless, the traditional understanding of the corporate purpose seems to fall short on prompting corporations to play a more proactive role vis-à-vis these challenges. A more solid legal basis to re-conceptualize, to some extent, the role of corporations in modern times is hence necessary and might be provided by the socalled double materiality principle, which has been embedded in the European Union legal framework.