KUALA LUMPUR: Stronger corporate accountability alongside sustainability and climate laws are growing increasingly vital as climate change creates progressively legal, economic and environmental risks worldwide, say experts.
Climate Governance Malaysia (CGM) council chairman Dr Gary Theseira said climate change was affecting ecosystems beyond forests and terrestrial biodiversity, including increasingly vulnerable marine ecosystems.
He said that warming oceans and changing weather patterns, caused by climate change, were also creating additional risks for communities and industries dependent on the sea.
“A lot of other ecosystems are suffering, such as recorded rates of coral bleaching due to warming oceans.
“There's also the worrying number of reported storms that form in the Pacific due to warm sea surface temperatures,” he said in his opening remarks at the Climate & Law Conference 2026 on Wednesday (Sept 23).
To this, Theseira said progressive ideas on how to apply sustainable laws or practices in corporate governance are now just as important as having the laws themselves.
He said this was especially true for legislation that is burdensome to draft, pass, enforce and amend, adding that alternative approaches should be considered where appropriate.
“We need to think further ahead if we are going to actually adequately address the impacts of climate change,” he added.
Securities Commission (SC) chairman Datuk Mohammad Faiz Azmi said Malaysia’s climate vulnerability had significant economic implications despite the country accounting for only 0.7% of global carbon emissions.
He said rising temperatures and changing weather patterns could affect productivity, public health, food security and biodiversity, with heat stress posing a significant economic risk.
“In fact, under a high impact scenario, it's estimated that heat stress alone could reduce our gross domestic product (GDP) by up to 16% by 2050. It's a stark warning,” he said in his opening speech at the event.
Faiz noted that the World Bank estimates Malaysia would need about RM3.5trillion for climate adaptation and resilience financing to avoid the worst-case scenario.
“This is no longer just an environmental consideration; it is actually a national economic and development priority to figure out how we're going to raise money to do this,” he said.
To this, he said companies needed stronger sustainability disclosures to demonstrate how they were managing climate-related risks.
Asian International Arbitration Centre Court of Arbitration president Datuk Mary Lim Thiam Suan said corporate decision-makers must take wider public interests into account now more than ever.
“Business decision-makers must be reminded of how they are affecting other people, and everyone's rights.
“No one should be told that they have to go to court to assert their right to live, to have a livelihood,” she said.
Lim said environmental and human rights concerns should be meaningfully incorporated into business decisions rather than treated as routine due diligence exercises.
She added that directors should ensure internal controls and audit systems were in place to safeguard decisions affecting people and the environment.
“Ethical decisions demand that internal control audit systems must be in place and utilised to assess that all decisions are made with effective and practical safeguards truly in place,” she said.
Held from Sept 21 to 23, the CGM Climate & Law Conference 2026 brought together dozens of legal practitioners, key policymakers, industry leaders and climate experts to examine the evolving relationship between climate change, law and governance.
Co-hosted by CGM and the Malaysian Bar’s Environment, Climate Change and ESG Committee, the three-day conference explored climate litigation, corporate accountability, fiduciary duties, investment arbitration and regulatory frameworks.
