Tackling greenwashing through data assurance

Greenwashing threatens to derail the green finance agenda and the transition to net zero – find out how data assurance can help

Greenwashing – the practice of businesses or investment funds making misleading or unsubstantiated claims about environmental performance – threatens to derail the transition to net zero. Read and comment on our draft report explaining how data assurance can help

We are living through a climate emergency. According to reports from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we have less than a decade to dramatically change course if we are to avert the worst impacts of global heating.

In response to this, countries across the world have committed to legally-binding carbon emission reduction targets, and in 2019 the UK became the first major economy to commit in law to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Delivering on these targets will require organisations in every sector to transform their activities, requiring significant shifts in investment away from polluting activities and towards projects which support the transition to a zero-carbon economy.

These efforts are threatened by ‘greenwashing’: the practice of businesses or investment funds making misleading or unsubstantiated claims about their environmental performance.

Our new draft report ‘Tackling greenwashing through data assurance’ explores how data assurance can help to tackle greenwashing by improving the trustworthiness of the data used to assess environmental risks and impacts.

Read and comment on our draft report

This report is published as an open draft for comment – please feel free to add your thoughts, reactions and commentary directly.

Alternatively, you can get in touch with us by emailing the ODI’s Policy team at [email protected] or by filling out the contact form on our project page.