“PwC aims to engender trust in society and solve significant problems. We provide businesses with broad-based support for sustainability, whether related to business management, taxation, legal advice or reporting on financial information. There is currently a clear demand for the promotion of sustainability research, and we wish to contribute to the establishment of a professorship in support of this goal,” says CEO Mikko Nieminen of PwC Finland.
The Faculty of Law of the University of Helsinki aims to establish a professorship focused on environmental law for a five-year term. The professorship focuses on promoting a sustainable and responsible society and economic activity by investigating the boundaries and opportunities of environmental regulation in particular.
“We are extremely grateful for this significant donation. Establishing a new professorship in sustainability law contributes, by means of legal science, to solving the crucial sustainability challenges of our time together with our students, researchers, partners and stakeholders,” says Vice-Dean Juha Raitio from the Faculty of Law.
The purpose of the new professorship is to consolidate multidisciplinary research-based knowledge on regulation that guides society through the green sustainability transition of the European Union. Research enables proactive contribution to the development of both legislation and corporate self-regulation.
Initially, the focus is on regulation that curbs climate change and biodiversity loss. Both perspectives are needed, for example, to reconcile businesses’ duty of disclosure and new sustainability criteria for funding with their business operations. In fact, the field of the professorship is at the intersection of environmental law and economic law.
Research on sustainability, including the development of uniform certificates and standards, promotes international competitiveness. In addition, the research carried out in the field anticipates changes in the regulatory environment of business operations, thus supporting the fair transition of operations and the labour force in society. Basing indicators and reporting on precisely the factors that are relevant to the sustainability goals is crucial for our future. To achieve this, the impact of the factors to be reported must be scientifically verified.
Contact details:
Mikko Nieminen, CEO, PwC Finland: mikko.nieminen@pwc.com, +358 20 787 7257
Juha Raitio, Vice-Dean: juha.raitio@helsinki.fi, +358 50 448 2737