Tackling Greenwashing – Consumer Protection as a Vessel for Climate Action

Keynote Lecture, as part of the Sustainability Careers Workshop:



Greenwashing refers to a corporate practice of making false or misleading claims about environmental sustainability in advertising, making a company appear ‘greener’ that it really is. Greenwashing is influencing consumer decisions and is distracting the public from the environmental harm many of the companies engaging in this type of advertising are causing.



ClientEarth and other NGOs are therefore taking action to combat these harmful practices. On the basis of consumer protection legislation, we file lawsuits against companies that engage in greenwashing. We then realise media campaigns to publicly rectify falsely made claims.



In this keynote lecture, I will explore how tackling greenwashing as type of climate action requires the involvement of professionals from multiple disciplines to succeed. We will look at successful court cases, such as a recent judgment against KLM. We will also learn why many files never make it to court and explain what you can do to address greenwashing.



Speaker:

Natascha Kersting is a Law and Policy Advisor at ClientEarth. She works on ecosystem governance, developing and implementing strategies to prevent deforestation and encourage reforestation in West and Central Africa. She also supports strategic litigation, currently an OECD complaint against Cargill. Natascha is also Senior Research Fellow at Cambridge Governance Labs where she leads a project on Responsible AI Governance. She holds an LL.M. in public international law from the University of Cambridge and law degrees from Panthéon-Sorbonne University in Paris and the University of Cologne.