An Inconvenient Truth About Climate-Related Shareholder Activism

Climate-related shareholder activism, although not a new phenomenon in Canada,¹s no longer the exclusive domain of environmentalists and increasingly a key plank in institutional shareholder and activist campaigns. A new era of climate-related activism is dawning, from "say-on-climate" and other environmental-related shareholder proposals, to proxy fights over the adequacy of companies' climate-related transition plans or emissions-reduction targets, to climate-related litigation against companies and their directors and officers for "greenwashing" and other matters. We anticipate that climate will become the predominate issue in upcoming proxy seasons, particularly for issuers in the mining, metals, energy, industrial and tech sectors, as well as for those issuers' lenders and key service providers.