The latest insights from the We Mean Business coalition

The RPE Framework turns one as the Corporate Climate Advocacy Landscape Continues to Evolve

It’s a year since we launched our Responsible Policy Engagement framework at London Climate Action Week. As countries develop national climate plans and companies prepare for new disclosure and reporting regimes, how is the corporate climate advocacy landscape changing?

London Climate Action Week (LCAW) has come round again. That means it’s just over a year since we launched Ambition to Advocacy: A Framework for Responsible Policy Engagement (RPE), a collection of resources developed by the We Mean Business Coalition with Ceres and a taskforce of partners to help more companies practice RPE actively and positively. For the first time, the Framework brought together the best available tools, guides, resources and examples of best practice for businesses.    

One year on, it’s a good time to ask: how has the wider landscape on corporate climate advocacy changed, and what else is needed to help more companies seize the opportunities of climate-positive policy engagement?

RPE rising up the agenda  

Responsible Policy Engagement has shot up companies’ agendas  in the last year and rightly so. As our Managing Director of Policy Andrew Prag argued in a joint blog with InfluenceMap’s Dylan Tanner recently: corporate policy engagement and positive advocacy are just as essential to meet the Paris Agreement goals as net zero goals and transition plans.  

 The number of LCAW events on RPE and corporate climate advocacy is up on 2023, which is hugely encouraging to see. We would like to think that the RPE Framework has played a role in that, by creating a common reference point for companies and actors in this space to point to, socializing best practice, and even creating common language and terms to foster the right conversations. Meanwhile, regulation and stakeholder pressure are putting the spotlight on disclosure.  

Many companies are now preparing for mandatory reporting against the EU Directive on Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence (CSRD) – and some pioneers have already released reports, as covered in this deep dive report on the early adopters from my colleague Jane Thostrup Jagd. The CSRD elements that pertain to corporate lobbying are contained in ESRS G1-5, which is voluntary to report upon.  

Our simple interpretation is that there is limited overlap in what G1-5 covers, and what is set out the RPE Framework. However, we have identified overlap around two areas: accounting for financial contributions and determining alignment between lobbying positions and the companies’ main/public positions. We look forward to reviewing the filings from companies that choose to report against this.  

As well as incoming regulation, investor pressure is a key driver of disclosure – especially from investors involved in CA100+ who instigated the Global Standard on Responsible Climate Lobbying, with which the RPE framework is aligned.  

In a further development on corporate disclosure our partner CDP will roll out a new multi-environmental issue format for the full corporate questionnaire.  This is to push corporate ambition further, and to support companies and financial markets to transition in line with a 1.5°C, nature-positive world. It combines all three existing questionnaires across climate change, forests, and water security into one integrated questionnaire. We look forward to reviewing the company responses to the governance module in particular.   

Meanwhile, companies have been busy drafting and publishing their own reports on corporate climate advocacy and trade group misalignment. Our friends at InfluenceMap do a sterling job tracking and evaluating these reports A notable mention to Unilever for being top of the class for their report published earlier this year, though many companies have room for improvement.

Where next for responsible policy engagement by corporates? 

Since its founding in 2014, the We Mean Business Coalition has sought to highlight the crucial role business can play in pushing policymakers to set more ambitious climate policies.  

The RPE Framework was launched to address the clear need to do more to encourage and facilitate progressive businesses to speak up and advocate for stronger climate policy. It is organized around the following steps: commit to speak up, make your voice heard, align trade associations, allocate advocacy spending, and disclose your advocacy.  

The Framework has been successful in building awareness and providing tools to companies to improve both the substance and the process of how they advocate, but there is potential to go much further. The Coalition and our partners including Race to Zero, The B Team, WBCSD and Ceres have a number of relevant workstreams underway to build on the existing framework. These new workstreams are set to raise the bar on how companies advocate, the internal processes they have to do so, and how they report on their activities.  

In developing these workstreams, we as a group of organizations have taken on board what we’ve heard from partners and companies working in this space. Namely, the need for alignment and clarity. All coalition partners and supporting partners are committed to working together to ensure our efforts are synergistic, supportive, and complementary. We aim to avoid competition and confusion, ensuring that our collective work builds on each other’s strengths and amplifies our impact. We especially aim to support companies working with all of us, ensuring they receive coherent and unified guidance and resources. In this spirit, below is a summary of the relevant workstreams from We Mean Business and our partners, and how companies can engage tagged with the relevant step in the RPE Framework to which each new workstream relates.  

1. We Mean Business Coalition 

The Coalition will update the RPE Framework with new resources for companies in the autumn of 2024. In addition, we have identified two areas to further drive increased corporate climate advocacy:  

• Raising the bar on corporate climate advocacy leadership to influence ambitious national climate policy. The next 18 months is critical window for engaging governments as they develop their new Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement. There are real opportunities to galvanize positive business policy advocacy to ensure the right policies are put in place to drive the clean energy transition at the speed and scale needed. [Make your voice heard]
   
• Address identified gaps in the tools and best practice available to companies in their application of RPE. During the development of the RPE Framework and in subsequent conversations with companies, we identified two clear gaps in the tools and resources available, which we will address to drive more effective and responsible corporate climate advocacy: company reporting on their climate advocacy and evaluation of corporate spend on climate advocacy.  [Disclose your advocacy; Allocate advocacy spend]
   

We will begin company consultation for the update of the RPE Framework later in the summer, please contact Dominic Gogol ([email protected]) to learn more.

2. Race to Zero  

Race to Zero is the world’s largest alliance of all non-state actors, including businesses, committed to halving emissions by 2030. One of the central features of the campaign is the 5th P, Persuade, encouraging all non-state actors to align their advocacy, policy, and engagement with net zero goals. 

In 2024, the Race to Zero is co-convening a Net Zero Policy Community of NGO representatives alongside We Mean Business Coalition, Ceres and Oxford Net Zero to ensure NGOs are strategically aligning on their advocacy goals and engagement on net zero policy and regulation.  

A key workstream recently has been equipping businesses with clear guidance on engaging their business associations on positive climate policy engagement. Ahead of London Climate Action Week, the ‘Business Associations Climate Action Guide’ was launched for the purpose of raising awareness on the role of business associations in shaping climate policy. Read more here.  Contact: [email protected] [Align trade associations]

3. The B Team 

The Good Lobby and The B Team are working with a group of companies to set out a range of tools — and an action framework – to foster Responsible Political Engagement (RPE). This initiative focuses on company action and the steps that map the journey toward RPE, sharing and uplifting policies, practices and impact.  

A range of tools will be co-created by the companies, alongside investors, academic experts, government and civil society. The initiative as a whole will extend beyond the action framework’s tools, and include the building of community, the experience of sharing/learning, benchmarking and diagnostics. When it is ready, the action framework would be adopted and promoted by the companies themselves, both internally and externally, with the support of The Good Lobby and The B Team, and should serve as the basis for voluntary corporate action in this space.  

The action framework tools would be issue agnostic — they do not concentrate on a single sector or type of policy area. Rather, their aim is to guide companies to build the core architecture of RPE, to provide the strong foundation needed for accountable political work. They also aim to help companies take the right action or make the right engagement at the right time, assisting with the critical decisions that govern political engagement within companies, answering such questions as when and how to engage, on what? [Commit to speak up]

4. WBCSD 

WBCSD has recently launched a new “Positive Policy Engagement” workstream supported by an Advisory Board that will guide the development of this work and the support, tools and knowledge that companies need to ensure that their policy and advocacy engagement is positively delivering climate, nature and equity goals. Areas of interest that the Board is exploring include: 

• Engagement with Trade Associations 
• The Business Case for Positive Policy Engagement 
• Transparency and Disclosure 
• Education and Capacity-building 

The focus for the Board will be on developing a two-year strategic plan, including identifying key areas of impact, prioritizing initiatives, and mapping out actionable steps to support our objectives and fill critical gaps identified by companies, with our available resources. 

WBCSD is also collaborating with Volans on the development of an in-depth Trade Association Engagement Playbook. The aim is to equip companies to assess, align and activate trade associations to amplify direct positive policy engagement. This will build directly on the foundations laid by the Race to Zero guide, incorporating in-depth consultations, detailed guidance, extensive case studies, and best practice examples. [Align trade associations]

5. Ceres  

Ceres has continued its work on responsible policy engagement by recently benchmarking companies in three of the highest emitting US sectors – Banking, Electric Power, and Transportation – on their direct and indirect lobbying efforts. The findings have remained consistent with the larger trend on corporate climate advocacy; while some companies are lobbying in line with climate goals, the majority are still lobbying inconsistently both individually and through trade associations.   [Make your voice heard]