International Environmental Obligations and Corporate Accountability for Climate Change: A Doctrinal and Comparative Analysis of Emerging Accountability Pathways

Abstract

This article examines the extent to which corporations can be held legally responsible for climate-related risks, misleading climate representations, failures of corporate process, supply-chain impacts and physical climate harm. It identifies six accountability pathways – climate disclosure, truthful environmental communication, directors’ duties, human-rights and environmental due diligence, judicial or administrative mitigation measures, and compensation for harm – and explores how international norms are translated into domestic corporate obligations. The analysis is doctrinal and comparative in nature and is informed by the International Court of Justice’s Advisory Opinion of 23 July 2025 on Obligations of States in Respect of Climate Change, the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the 2023 OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises on Responsible Business Conduct, legislation, regulatory materials and reported cases. The comparison includes the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, India and Pakistan with specific reference to the distinction between State responsibility and direct corporate liability. The article argues that the 2025 ICJ Opinion solidifies the international-law foundation for domestic regulation of private operators, but does not establish a direct corporate cause of action before the Court. The clearest enforceable duties currently arise through disclosure, misleading-conduct and corporate-governance rules in the domestic systems examined. Supply-chain due diligence is developing through a mix of statute, soft law and contractual mechanisms. Compensation for climate-related physical harm remains doctrinally and procedurally unsettled. The article introduces a pathway-and-remedy framework that distinguishes legal obligation, enforcement mechanism, and available remedy, using Pakistan as a Global South case study to test the limits of transnational corporate climate accountability.