CLARS Visiting Scholar Seminar Explores Ensuring the Accuracy of ESG Disclosures
The Centre for Commercial Law and Regulatory Studies (CLARS) at Monash Law hosted a lunchtime seminar featuring Associate Professor Takuma Kumashiro from Kobe University, a visiting scholar at CLARS. Associate Professor Kumashiro presented his paper, Guardians of the Truth: How to Ensure the Accuracy of ESG Information, offering a rigorous and engaging examination of how corporate ESG disclosures can be assessed and verified.
The presentation analysed both ex ante and ex post mechanisms for ensuring ESG disclosure reliability, and critically compared the use of public and private enforcement techniques across the European Union, the United States and Japan. Drawing on comparative legal analysis, the paper highlighted the strengths and limitations of different regulatory approaches, prompting a lively discussion among seminar participants.
Associate Professor Kumashiro will remain at CLARS until August and will continue to participate in a range of scholarly activities during his visit before he departs for Oxford University later in the year.
L-R: Associate Professor Takuma Kumashiro, CLARS Director Professor Jennifer Hill, Associate Professor May Fong Cheong visiting from UNSW, with CLARS colleagues Lisa Di Marco and Victoria Lambropoulos.
Visit the Academic Visitors Calendar for more information about collaborators and visitors to Monash Law.
Guardians of Truth: Rethinking How We Policy ESG Disclosure Accuracy
Paper
As mandatory ESG disclosure proliferates, jurisdictions have adapted enforcement mechanisms originally designed for financial information to the distinct challenges posed by ESG information, often with inadequate results. This presentation examines how public and private, ex-ante and ex-post, enforcement mechanisms can be structured to ensure the accuracy of ESG disclosure while balancing the interests of investors, stakeholders, and society.
A comparative 2×2 matrix maps enforcement measures across Japan, the US, and the EU, revealing distinct trade-offs among cost, coverage, and deterrence. Japan's resource-constrained public sanctions produce systemic under-enforcement; US investor litigation risks chilling disclosure; and the EU’s mandatory third-party assurance under the CSRD is costly, narrow, and constrained by a shortage of qualified providers. An empirical study of Japanese enforcement confirms these deficits: eight identified cases cluster around governance disclosures, with environmental and social misstatements largely escaping scrutiny.
The presentation proposes a hybrid model allocating tools by comparative advantage: reserving ex-ante assurance for verifiable metrics; expanding public audit capacity for broader disclosures; and calibrating liability thresholds to context-specific materiality reflecting ESG's qualitative character, thereby avoiding both greenwashing and disclosure chill.
Now available to download from SSRN.
Seminar
When: Thursday 26 March 2026
Time: 12:30pm - 2pm
Campus: Monash University Law Chambers
Level 1, 555 Lonsdale St, Melbourne
The full session was recorded on the CLARS Video Portal.
Associate Professor Takuma Kumashiro
Dr Takuma Kumashiro is an Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Law, Kobe University, and an Academic Visitor at Monash University Faculty of Law (Feb–Aug 2026). His research draws on comparative analysis of Japan, the US, and Commonwealth jurisdictions, as well as law and economics methodologies, spanning corporate law, securities regulation, contract law, insolvency law, and insurance law.
His scholarship is organised around three interconnected pillars: the substantive regulation of conflicts of interest between corporate insiders and outside shareholders (encompassing executive compensation and related-party transactions); ESG disclosure frameworks; and enforcement effectiveness. Beyond these core themes, he has also engaged with contract law, insolvency law, and insurance law, including long-term commercial service agreements, Schemes of Arrangement for financially distressed insurers, and the duty of disclosure in insurance contracts. He is the author of the Japanese monograph, Balancing Fairness and Incentives: Comprehensive Analysis of the Laws Governing Executive Pay (Kōbundō, 2022).