Sustainable Finance and Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence

This article examines accountability logics in two prominent regulatory interventions designed to integrate sustainability into corporate governance frameworks: sustainable finance and mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence. Having emerged in Europe, these interventions are now being considered and/or introduced in other jurisdictions, including Australia, as part of policy responses to global sustainability challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss and human rights abuses in supply chains. Analysing these reforms through an accountability lens helps capture relationships and power dynamics that may otherwise be overlooked or underappreciated and contributes to understandings of the likely impacts of these reforms. It also helps reveal differences, convergences, and potential complementarities between these two interventions, as well as variations in their design and implementation, which can inform law and policymaking processes. Drawing on early experiences in Europe, this article offers insights to inform the nature and trajectory of Australia’s nascent corporate sustainability project