Introduction

The field of corporate accountability and liability for climate change is rapidly evolving. The contributions to this volume interact with the rise of a multi-layered transnational framework of corporate climate law by, essentially, addressing two interrelated questions. First, the question arises whether or not, and under which conditions, the current transnational legal framework governing corporate accountability and liability for climate change, as a whole and the separate areas of the law containing it, provide for an allocation of responsibilities and liabilities that purposefully contributes to dealing with climate change. Second, the question arises how emerging issues of corporate climate change accountability and liability can be captured in the existing rules and doctrines of various areas of law, and whether or not these doctrines and rules should be adapted to suffice. This chapter introduces these questions.