Climate change risk-related disclosures in extractive industries

Abstract

Climate change has been increasingly (and more urgently) recognised by governments and supranational organisations as one of the main risks that the planet and mankind are facing. A number of recent prominent initiatives, notably the 2015 Paris Agreement and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, aim at mitigating this risk by reducing emissions and, hence, restraining global warming. These developments have a direct impact on the business world and serious implications for specific industries: primarily the extractive industries, which face an urgent need to alter their operations substantially in order to survive in this new reality. Considering that companies in the extractive industries are responsible for almost half of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (IRP 2019), climate change can no longer be seen as a side effect of their operations but as central issue for their business model and a core business risk.