Local:
Raise public awareness about climate denial and greenwashing

Through education, media engagement, and resolutions, build political will for polluting industry liability and denormalise corporate impunity and business-as-usual.

What does this look like?

• Raise awareness, inform, and educate decision-makers and the public regarding corporations’ role in exacerbating climate change,[1][2][3][4] the need to protect climate policies from vested corporate interests,[5][6][7] as well as the strategies and tactics used by corporations to interfere with the setting and implementation of climate action[8][9] and liability measures[10][11] at every level of governance, including through greenwashing.[12][13][14]

• Increase awareness through public materials, media, and local resolutions and/or investigations that expose the fossil fuel industry’s (and other polluting industries’) historic and ongoing practice of using individuals, front groups, and trade organizations to act, openly or covertly, on their behalf or to take action to further industry interests.[15][16]

• Mandate public school curricula that critically examine the intersections between polluting industries’ global expansion and abuses and the political, economic, and social impacts of colonialism, imperialism, and racism.

Implementing the measures of the liability roadmap

Decision-makers and movements at all levels should keep the following in mind when implementing the measures laid out in this roadmap:

• Enacting these policies and measures is simply the first step to holding polluting and destructive industries liable: There will be much work for government officials, decision-makers, activists and civil society alike to do to ensure these measures are fully implemented and move us toward the transformative change the world needs.

• Liability should be applied to all industries and corporations that make business decisions that contribute to climate change and its impacts, or that cause harm to people and nature. In addition to the fossil fuel industry, these industries include but are not limited to agribusiness, forestry, mining, and the energy sector. 

• Many of these measures could equally apply to State-owned corporations. Because the national contexts and unique needs vary from country to country, it is worth considering where to apply and how to adapt the principles and measures listed in the liability roadmap to address State-owned polluting corporations. Factors to consider when doing so could include but are not limited to the degree of democratic control over the entity, role and use of funding from oil/gas revenues, and responsiveness of the entity to transition to regenerative, renewable energy sources. 

• Measures implemented at the national level should support and reinforce, rather than contradict, measures implemented at the sub-national and local, and vice versa.

— back to top