FFGF Preview 2025
Companies & Advocates Lawyer Up
Photo by Colin Lloyd (edited) on Unsplash
Each year, around this time, we publish the Force for Good Forecast, our team's signature annual report. We do so to help corporate leaders navigate and lead on the year's most notable social and environmental advocacy trends.
We are nearly complete with our 2025 FFGF, in the meantime, we’d like to share our 2025 line-up and offer a taste of what’s to come by showcasing one of our trends (Companies & Advocates Lawyer Up.) Come back soon for our full report!
Companies & Advocates Lawyer Up
During the first Trump administration, we witnessed record funding flow to more progressive environmental groups to challenge the Trump administration's attempts to roll back environmental and human health protections. Part of this funding surge was deployed toward ramping up advocacy groups’ litigation capacity to defend current laws and check perceived corporate and governmental overreach. To paraphrase one philanthropic strategist: “Companies cannot have unlimited right to plunder.”
With “Trump Bump” funding, groups like Earthjustice and NRDC staffed up. The latter filed lawsuits nearly every ten days, winning 90% of the time. We will see litigation return in force in 2025 for Trump v2, with groups like Earthjustice planning to “see Donald Trump in court.” Since Trump’s first administration, the courts have shifted rightward, which suggests that environmental and social advocacy groups may win less frequently. Still, the tactic will widely delay projects and slow down companies and lawmakers.
During the Biden Administration, significant funding was redeployed from defending social and environmental laws toward passing laws. Once the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) passed, funders shifted again, this time toward the election, leading to a sharp drop in funding to many environmental groups and layoffs. At the same time, we saw conservative funders and issues advocates ramp up litigation campaigns, challenging diversity programs, offshore wind in what has been dubbed “climate delayism,” as well as agency rule-making authority. With Republicans’ electoral victory, will conservative funders shift funding from supporting litigation toward legislative priorities?
We anticipate increased climate court cases to hold companies accountable for legacy pollution and efforts to challenge corporate sustainability claims. Several countries and regions have implemented greenwashing laws, which subject companies to scrutiny on various factors, from carbon neutrality to forced labor in supply chains. Groups like Stand.Earth are leveraging these regulations in its campaigns to shift industry practices, and last year, a group of 2000 Swiss women won a climate case at Europe’s top human rights court.
One unintended consequence of these new laws and litigation risk is “greenhushing,” as companies scale back their transparency and publicly stated ambition, which ironically has generally been encouraged by social and environmental issue advocacy groups seeking to push companies to set high bars to challenge peers to meet or exceed in a virtuous, competitive “race to the top.” Over time, we will likely see litigation triggered by these laws decline as companies learn how to comply. Companies operating in multiple markets with these laws will likely adhere to the most stringent law, resulting in less reporting transparency for consumers and investors. Additionally, companies will likely increasingly rely on “smart supply chains,” using blockchain and emerging AI tools to more accurately assess their progress toward their stated goals and ensure they are not greenwashing.
Another consequence of these laws is that companies and their associations are increasingly pushing back, filing lawsuits against shareholders activists and the SEC, as well as environmental NGOs for perceived overreach, which some decry as seeking to muzzle, or shall we say, “greenhush” civil society and small investors.
One final related and fascinating trend to watch in 2025 is the growing global movement to enshrine nature with legal ‘personhood’ to stem biodiversity loss. Similar to how laws are used to protect fetuses who cannot speak for themselves, so too are advocates seeking rights for nature, which is foundational to all life and unable to speak for itself. Two notable examples are Ecuador and the State of Montana in the U.S., where lawsuits have been used to protect nature’s rights over corporate interests. While outcomes have been mixed as the body of law surrounding nature’s legal rights is built, we will see Indigenous tribal nations adopting these laws to protect their lands from development.
Two Leading Indicators:
A global survey of 1,400 sustainability executives conducted by climate consultancy South Pole found that 58% had decreased their communications on net zero because of greater regulation and scrutiny.
Blackrock CEO Larry Fink stopped using the term “ESG”
Bottomline: Companies face an increasingly litigious minefield where they must navigate competing social, ecological, and political priorities. 2025 promises to be a year that will keep corporate, governmental, and civil society litigators busy on various social and environmental issues that will impact corporate reputation and profitability.
Author: Erik Wohlgemuth & the Future 500 Team
As always, we welcome your feedback. To stay engaged with our work as we provide further analysis into these critical issues, check out our Corporate Affinity Network, or subscribe to our newsletter for regular insights from the Future 500 team.
Could your organization benefit from an executive briefing on the trends in this report? Email gryan@future500.org
*Future 500 builds trust between companies, advocates, investors, and philanthropists to advance business as a force for good. We specialize in stakeholder engagement, sustainability strategy, and responsible communication. From stakeholder mapping to materiality assessments, partnership development to activist engagement, target setting to reporting strategy, we empower our partners with the skills and relationships needed to systemically tackle today's most pressing environmental, social, and governance challenges.
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