A new ECGI working paper explains how mandatory sustainability reporting is changing what corporate directors must oversee, even where company law has not created new ESG duties. The study describes a disclosure-duty feedback loop: once companies publish climate risks, targets, and oversight arrangements, those disclosures become benchmarks for judging future board conduct. The paper compares the UK, Singapore, and Delaware. UK directors face three channels of ESG accountability, Singapore two, and Delaware mainly one tied to oversight under the duty of loyalty. It also flags Scope 3 emissions as a particular challenge because directors depend on third-party estimates and should be protected when they rely on reasonable processes. The authors propose four reforms: clearer oversight duties, safe harbors for good-faith forward-looking statements and Scope 3 estimates, proportionate assurance, and mutual recognition between equivalent reporting regimes. For multinational boards, the practical takeaway is that sustainability reporting is becoming part of the legal record used to judge governance, so documented oversight processes matter.
