A polycentric governance in response to climate change. The case study of the B Corps movement

Thanks to the full recognition of the risks associated with climate change and the general criticality of the environment in the world, environmental issues have reached unprecedented prominence on the world political scene. A global institutional question on how to proceed politically to counter this imminent environmental catastrophe and on how to increase entrepreneurial environmental responsibility. Recent debates on "environmental states" have given rise to political contributions that focus on the ways in which the state, intergovernmental organizations and the economic structure are involved in environmental responsibility and climate change. However, international agreements and treaties and national commitments to reduce climate change and increase environmental responsibility are not at all effective. The latest data available do not portend an improvement but a worsening on a global level that even break records of global warming. At the beginning of 2021 there are two worrying data, which proceed in parallel. On the one hand, the so-called "Nationally determined contributions", with which the Parties set their own targets for reducing emissions, are inadequate to achieve the goal of limiting the temperature increase to 2 degrees C, and more reason are therefore inadequate with respect to the more ambitious goal of limiting the increase to 1.5 degrees C. Indeed, 2021 was the sixth-warmest year on record based on NOAA's temperature data. Averaged across land and ocean, the 2021 surface temperature was 1.51 ° F (0.84 ° Celsius) warmer than the twentieth-century average of 57.0 ° F (13.9 ° C) and 1.87 ˚F (1.04 ˚C) warmer than the pre-industrial period (1880-1900). In view of a future in danger for our land, academic attention has also grown regarding new forms of governance to manage the emergency of climate change in an alternative way to the traditional one of international agreements and state commitments. Various studies are making major contributions on how civil society and small institutional centres are organizing themselves to manage the problems in question at different levels (locally, regionally, up to a global level) by creating different forms of governance that are alternative but complementary to the system of traditional governance giving life to a governance with a polycentric approach in which several power centres coexist which determine their own governance characteristics to address climate change and protect the environment. Much has been done regarding the local organization of cities and municipalities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while there are still few studies on how companies have organized themselves to contribute in this regard. Therefore, with this thesis I propose a political contribution through the analysis of an alternative governance established by a civil-entrepreneurial movement such as "B Corp" the non-profit network transforming the global economy to benefit all people, communities, and the planet. An organization with global, transnational ambitions, addressing the complex problems of climate change and environmental responsibility. This form of alternative governance (or centre of power) is part of that schematic framework that I have previously mentioned of “governance with a polycentric approach”