On December 5, 2013, Assistant Professor Gail Henderson presented at the University of Oslo in Oslo, Norway, as part of the Sustainable Companies conference titled "We Make It Happen". The Sustainable Companies Project was a three-year research project based at the University of Oslo, involving scholars from across Europe, as well as from the US, Canada and Indonesia. The purpose of the Project was to examine how corporate or company law could be used to integrate the goal of environmental sustainability into corporate decision-making, not as a peripheral factor or as a means of enhancing profits, but as an independent policy goal. A working premise of the Project is that existing regulations that seek to impose external restraints on corporate behaviour are insufficient.
Professor Gail Henderson presenting at "We Make It Happen" conferenceThe first Project conference was held August 29 & 30, 2011. At the 2011 conference, Professor Henderson presented the idea of imposing on boards of directors a duty to minimize the corporation's environmental impacts. At the 2013 conference, which marked the conclusion of the Sustainable Companies Project, Professor Henderson explained what a duty to minimize environmental impacts would require of boards; namely, that they would have an obligation to ensure that the corporation's activities were undertaken in the manner that was "minimally impairing" of the environment, unless doing so would cause the company "undue hardship".
Domus Academica, University of Oslo Faculty of Law"There are market and political pressures on corporations to present a 'green' image," states Professor Henderson, "But the facts of climate change and other serious environmental problems mean that we can't leave it up to the contingency of markets; corporate law needs to mandate that boards supervise the corporation with a view to environmental sustainability, as well as profitability.
Professor Henderson's blog post on the conference: http://ualbertalaw.typepad.com/faculty/2013/12/the-sustainable-companies-project-conference-we-make-it-happen.html