Agnieszka Smoleńska and David Levi-Faur, Greenwashing and Trust Repair via Intermediation: The Case of ESG Rating Providers in Sustainable Finance, The webinar has been postponed. A new date will be announced soon.

Decentralised governance and self-regulation in sustainability transition relies on trust between actors. However, pervasive scandals and concerns about greenwashing suggest distrust. Governance strategies to repair and build trust via intermediaries provide some solution to the trust problem. This paper investigates the different institutional strategies to repair and build trust via ESG rating providers as regulatory intermediaries, in sustainable finance. Analysing the development of regulatory regimes around ESG rating, we raise two questions: First, what were the political dynamics around the adoption of ESG ratings provider rules in the EU and UK?Second, what are the differences between the trust-building and repair strategies deployed by the EU and the UK rule-makers?

Agnieszka Smoleńska is a She’s Part-Time Assistant Professor with the Florence School of Banking and Finance (EUI) and Institute of Law Studies (Polish Academy of Sciences) and a Senior Policy Fellow at the London School of Economics’ Centre for Economic Transition Expertise (CETEx)
David Levi-Faur is a Professor at the Department of Political Science and the Federmann School of Public Policy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Wolfson Family Chair in Public Administration.