Model and Strategy
The IPCC’s Global Warming of 1.5 °C report (2018) stated the need for unprecedented policy intervention globally to avert dangerous levels of climate change. Despite the dire warnings however, effective and binding regulations remain scarce globally. A key reason for this policy failure has been a decades-long process of corporate lobbying and narrative capture.
Rather than transforming business models in line with the Paris Agreement, the fossil fuel and energy intensive sectors have successfully held back the climate policy agenda. The policy influencing takes the form of narrative capture and arguing for technology and market-based solutions over government policy. It remains effective in blocking the policy action the IPCC states is needed.
Since 2015, InfluenceMap has tracked and communicated the climate influencing landscape globally to a range of actors who wish to stop this. InfluenceMap's corporate lobbying platform has become a mainstream tool in assessing and engaging with companies. Our analysis is radically altering how companies are viewed on the issue of climate change and shining a light on powerful trade groups that are opposing climate action around the world.
Impact
Since its launch in 2015, our analysis has tracked an uptick of support for strong climate action from certain areas of the corporate sector, representing powerful allies to counter the negative influence from fossil fuel and energy intensive sectors. A smaller subset of these positive companies are demonstrating true climate leadership by strategically engaging with policymakers and attempting to implement a regulatory pathway to facilitate their business transition to a zero-carbon future. InfluenceMap’s analysis is helping to drive this trend by ensuring the issue is accessible and understandable to stakeholders outside the corporate system, including large institutional investors, the media and the NGO community.
The lasting impact of our work will be on the reform to corporate lobbying practices around the climate policy agenda. This is currently the main blockage to the implementation of Paris Agreement-aligned policy globally. We consider reform on negative lobbying to be equally, if not more impactful in the long term than the reduction of corporate operational emissions. Our work will generate tangible change in corporate and trade association behavior, allowing governments around the world the space to implement Paris aligned policy.
InfluenceMap's theory of change is based on the power of data-driven research that enables stakeholders in finance, corporates, campaign NGOs and the media to act. A key lever for our work is the power of shareholders (in the form of institutional investors) who own the companies and have a mandate to engage with them on climate change. Another is the encouragement of proactive, positive policy engagement by non-fossil fuel corporate actors to counter negative influence.
Leadership
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Dylan Tanner
Executive Director & Co-founder
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Colin Melvin
Non-executive Chair
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Edward Collins
Director, Corporate Lobbying