Thinking Infrastructurally About Economic Value for a Socio-Ecological Transformation

Driven by flagship policy programmes like the Paris Agreement or European Green Deal, as well as widespread modes of climate change litigation, until now the political and legal focus to foster the green transition has been placed mainly on targeting governments and lead firms in key industries, such as banking, energy, or retail. This has been largely done through instilling ambitious net-zero goals that seek to realign the investment, production, and commercialization practices with sustainability aspirations throughout their respective supply chains and distribution channels. ReValue transcends this focus. This research project departs from the insight that to transform business activities towards more sustainable pathways, it is not enough to merely target key market-players. If the preservation of our planet requires corporations to ‘act differently’, we need to scrutinize how can corporations ‘think differently’ by placing the focus on certain transnational private regulators that currently hold the authority to constitute notions of economic 'value' or 'profit' that shape corporate preferences and financial flows in markets worldwide and thereby to transform them towards more sustainable pathways. Through the combination of new infrastructural perspectives in legal analysis with recent developments in economic sociology and political ecology, the overall aim of ReValue is thus to contribute to a cognitive transformation of corporations towards sustainability, by examining some crucial legal-regulatory infrastructures that nowadays configure the managerial rationality of what counts as economically worthy business.

Most leading policy and legal strategies to mitigate the existential risk posed by global warming—like the Paris Agreement and the European Green Deal, or widespread modes of climate litigation— focus on governments and big companies in key industries such as energy, banking, and retail. These strategies essentially aim to reduce emissions by setting ambitious “net-zero” targets throughout global supply chains and distribution channels. But despite nearly a decade of these efforts, global warming continues to rise. The world in fact surpassed a critical threshold in 2024, when average global temperatures exceeded 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels: the threshold scientists consider vital for sustaining life on Earth. This shows that the current strategy alone is not enough.
ReValue explores an innovative strategy to address this existential challenge. Instead of asking companies only to 'act differently', it asks how they can 'think differently' about what is considered economically “valuable” or “profitable” and thus worth pursuing by businesses. The project looks at the hidden legal-regulatory infrastructures that constitute prevalent notions of economic “value” or “profit” that shape corporate preferences and financial flows in contemporary markets worldwide. These legal-regulatory infrastructures are created by pivotal private organisations, such as those that set accounting standards and run stock exchanges. These norms determine what counts as income, wealth, and thus a successful business endeavour in global capital markets, as well as how to exchange those repositories of value within these markets, which significantly discipline business decisions and corporate action.
By studying the background, norms, and processes of these private organisations, ReValue aims to change the way corporations think about and measure economic “value” and thus success in global capital markets, so sustainability becomes part of the core logic of business-making. This overall aim translates into two specific objectives: first, to explain how accounting and stock exchange norms shape corporate preferences on where and why to invest; and second, to evaluate how these norms can be redesigned to align business decisions with sustainability goals. In this way, the project combines novel infrastructural perspectives on legal analysis with insights from economic sociology and political ecology to propose new ways of embedding social and environmental goals into the financial systems that drive the global economy.