Company Directors’ Duty of Care in the Anthropocene: The Emerging Concept of Climate Change Due Diligence

                            Across legal systems, the duty of care constitutes a fundamental norm of corporate law. As a well-established yet open-ended norm, it obliges company directors to act in the best interests of the company they oversee. This study examines how the meaning of the duty of care evolves in the context of growing climate change-related risks and impacts. In doing so, it explores the influence of international standards on responsible business conduct on the interpretation of this duty. Against the backdrop of mapping the ‘regime complex’ of corporate climate obligations and analysing, from a functional comparative perspective, the duty of care owed by directors in the Anthropocene – the era of climatic instability that is currently unfolding – the study investigates how the emerging concept of Climate Change Due Diligence is reshaping the contours of this duty.