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Author	Dr Mayank Shrivastava
Organisation/Institution	Hidayatullah National Law University
Country	INDIA
Panel	Corporate Law and Governance
Title	Greenwashing and Corporate Accountability in Asian Capital Markets - A Legal Perspective
Abstract	The increasing integration of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) considerations into corporate strategy and investment decisions has reshaped capital markets throughout Asia. Yet, this rapid transition has also exacerbated the problem of greenwashing, wherein companies make misleading or unsubstantiated sustainability claims to attract investors or enhance corporate reputation. Drawing upon a comparative corporate law and securities regulation perspective, the present paper explores legal and regulatory responses to greenwashing within selected Asian jurisdictions, specifically Japan, Singapore, and India. It asks whether existing norms of corporate governance, requirements of disclosure, and mechanisms of enforcement address questions of authenticity about the sustainability claims made by listed companies. With the aid of doctrinal and policy analysis, the study investigates whether current frameworks provide adequate assurance of corporate accountability and investor protection, or encourage mere procedural compliance without any substantive oversight of content. In developing this comparative framework, this paper contends that, though Asian regulators have increasingly mandated ESG disclosures and introduced soft-law instruments promoting transparency, enforcement remains fragmented and often limited to reputational sanctions rather than legal liability. By mapping statutory design, regulatory philosophy, and judicial engagement, it argues that institutional capacity and governance culture in different jurisdictions persistently shape the effectiveness of anti-greenwashing regimes. Finally, and in that light, it advocates for an integrated legal approach in the form of robust disclosure rules, director-level fiduciary accountability, and coordinated regional standards to combat greenwashing and reinforce market integrity. The paper contributes to the emerging comparative corporate governance literature by situating greenwashing as a core issue of corporate accountability in Asia's transition to sustainable finance.
Biography	Dr. Mayank Shrivastava is working as the Centre Head of the Centre for Securities Law under the School of Law and Commercial Arbitration, HNLU, and an Assistant Professor of Law at the Hidayatullah National Law University, Raipur, India since July 2021. Prior to this endeavor, he worked as an Assistant Professor of Law at the Amity University Chhattisgarh, Raipur. He has a teaching and research experience of more than 5 years primarily in the field of General Corporate Law, Securities Law, and Mergers & Acquisitions. He is holding a PhD in the global investor protection area. He holds an LLM degree with Corporate and Securities Law Specialisation from HNLU, Raipur, and is an alumnus at the undergraduate level of the University of Delhi where he completed his B. Com and LLB from the Faculty of Law. Mr. Shrivastava qualified UGC – NET in 2018 with 98 percentiles. He holds an interest in the areas pertaining to corporate and securities laws and their interplay with other relevant fields of law. As an accolade in his early career, he has multiple research papers published in various national as well as international journals indexed in Scopus, Google Scholar, Hein Online, Manupatra, etc., he has made presentations in 10 international and domestic conferences relating to corporate law, competition law, securities law, etc., the ASLI Conference, Bangkok, the ALSA Conference, Taiwan, NALSAR Corporate Law Conference, IIULER Goa International Conference, NLIU Bhopal Conference to name a few.