In Canadian corporate law, shareholders occupy a preferential role vis-à-vis other stakeholders. Shareholders are the only stakeholder with statutory rights, such as the right to elect and remove directors. Against this backdrop, this chapter examines the Canadian corporate governance landscape from the perspective of shareholders and examines the legal and market tools that shareholders have available to them. This chapter also explores the limitations and effectiveness of these mechanisms and considers various market actors who influence shareholder behaviour and can facilitate shareholder engagement. The chapter concludes with an analysis of three trends in shareholder engagement in Canada: (i) institutional investor engagement on issues at the core of ESG; (ii) the role of proxy advisory firms and the influence they wield over institutional shareholders; and (iii) the immediate  impact of COVID-19 on shareholder engagement.

Concentrated ownership, role played by promoters in companies and their cross shareholdings in group companies raise concerns about shareholder engagement and voting in Indian companies. The Companies Act, 2013 along with regulations of the Securities and Exchange Board of India is believed to have expanded the rights of shareholders. A pilot study for writing this chapter has been conducted to assess the shareholders engagement and voting pattern in Nifty 50 companies listed on National Stock Exchange, India. The Companies Act allocates powers to shareholders and company boards, but shareholders’ supremacy is reflected in general meetings of the company. The chapter has covered different types of shares ranging from simplest one share one vote to shares with differential voting rights and superior voting rights along with other rights of shareholders in general meetings. Impact on voting pattern during virtual meetings allowed during pandemic have also been observed in the chapter.

As one of the solutions to revive its economy that have suffered from stagnation of over two decades from 1991 onwards, the Japanese government has sought to change its stakeholder-oriented corporate governance system into more shareholder-oriented one and has implemented several reforms, including the adoption of the 2014 Japanese Stewardship Code and the 2015 Japanese Corporate Governance Code. As a consequence, shareholder engagement and voting have attracted considerable attention in the corporate governance scene in Japan in recent years. In particular, hedge fund activism and proxy fights are becoming more popular as the activists and the challenging shareholders expect that they would receive more support from domestic institutional investors than they had in the past.After describing the transition of the Japanese corporate governance system and the legal measures granted to shareholders, this chapter analyses the current state of the shareholder meeting and shareholder voting and engagement in Japan.

Under Danish law, the general meeting is omnipotent, meaning that it can decide on most issues, including issues that deal with day-to-day management of the company. Thus, in theory, shareholders are in a position to ensure that the general meeting decides most issues of concern to them, and the rules on calling a general meeting or proposing topics for the meeting agenda are also rather generous to shareholders. In practice, however, shareholders rarely call a meeting. Although they occasionally propose issues for the meeting agenda, those proposals are almost always voted down by a very high majority. Therefore, the potential for shareholder democracy and activism is not being exploited by shareholders in Denmark.It seems that in normal circumstances, a board will propose agenda items only when the law requires it to do so. We did find, however, that shareholders often ask questions and engage in debate at general meetings. We therefore conclude that shareholder democracy and activism are present in Denmark, although most likely it often takes place as interaction between the board and major shareholders before general meetings are held.

This chapter explores the change of paradigm related to corporate governance and shareholder engagement implementation in Indonesian public companies. With an overview of relevant Indonesian laws and regulations, this chapter further examines the development of General Meeting of Shareholders, voting, as well as other means of shareholder engagement in Indonesia including relevant adjustments during the COVID-19 pandemic. Questions concerning shareholder behaviour regarding share ownership and participation in company decision-making processes are answered through data analysis as well as empirical findings. The increasing number of individual shareholders in the Indonesian capital market scene brings about new direction on the practice of corporate governance and shareholder engagement, although the ownership structure in most companies remain concentrated and government higher power in state-owned enterprises still prevails.

This Chapter provides an extensive analysis of the regulatory framework for shareholder voting and engagement in Italy. Despite high levels of ownership concentration of publicly listed companies, institutional investors have grown into prominent players on the Italian corporate governance scene. In particular, the Italian practice of shareholder engagement shows that say-on-pay, related party transaction oversight and slate voting for director elections are all useful for policing institutional investors’ active ownership, but they have to mutually combine in order to be effective. First, say-on-pay is a tool complimentary to minority representation on the board of directors to foster institutional investor stewardship. Second, minority board representation ensured by slate voting can improve self-dealing oversight since ex ante independent scrutiny of related-party transactions is required. Moreover, at Italian listed companies, the presence of minority-elected directors has actually had a positive impact on the adequacy of internal procedures for addressing related-party transactions.

This chapter illuminates the extent to which the targets of SDG 15, Life on Land, reflect the international obligations of, and guidance adopted under, the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity as an umbrella convention with overarching legal principles and concepts. In doing so, it demonstrates the extent to which international human rights law can support joined-up implementation of the convention and other international environmental agreements with a view to realizing SDG 15 through policy coherence, notably in the context of land-based investments.

There are two elements to Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 17, Partnerships for the Goals: (1) efforts to improve the implementation of Agenda 2030 and (2) efforts to improve collective action globally in pursuit of sustainable development as envisaged by the SDGs. If taken as distinct components, the first phrase might suggest itself as relating to the implementation of the other sixteen SDGs – or perhaps sustainable development as a more generic objective (as broadly expressed by Agenda 2030) – whereas the latter phrase might indicate the re-energizing of a more substantive, and perhaps overarching, architecture of global collaboration. As this chapter will explore, SDG 17 is paradoxical in several important respects and, to the extent that it underpins the SDG agenda more broadly, is emblematic of the tensions at the heart of the SDGs, especially with respect to the normative context in which the SDGs are situated. For SDG 17, that context – and its situation therein – is particularly contested and contestable. Moreover, a focus on trade, investment, and voluntarism excludes and omits other important building blocks of human rights, rule of law, and civil society engagement.

This chapter reviews the role of Agenda 2030 in further developing water law. It concludes that Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6, Clean Water and Sanitation, is a step forward in recognizing the holistic nature of water but that it does not define water as a public good or common good/concern or heritage and also does not reflect on whether water limits require us to redefine growth. It goes beyond a sectoral approach to promote an urgent, coherent, systemic, and multi-level story rightly ignoring whether some of it is based on soft or hard (inter)national law. However, SDG 6 moves backward from limited sovereignty to emphasize full permanent sovereignty over natural resources, and while it emphasizes access to water and sanitation, it does not address the larger distributive issues on which, for example, the 1997 Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of Transboundary Watercourses elaborates. Finally, the implementation of SDG 6 may undermine its lofty goals by engaging the profit-oriented private sector in service delivery to the poorest and by enabling the commodification and privatization of the water.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Agenda 2030, and international law interact in multifaceted and complex ways. On the one hand, neither Agenda 2030 nor the SDGs fundamentally question the role of the international economic system, which is entrenched in international law and supportive of activities that do not necessarily further sustainable development. On the other hand, Agenda 2030 aims to transform our world, by evoking a bold cosmopolitan understanding of sustainable development, so that no one is left behind. This cosmopolitan understanding of sustainable development should inspire the application and development of international law, if indeed no one is to be left behind. International law offers ample opportunities for implementing such an approach to sustainable development.

Although Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5, Gender Equality, references many international law provisions and principles on gender equality and empowerment of women and girls, nevertheless, like their precursor, the 2000 Millennium Development Goals, the SDGs do not integrate gender as a cross-cutting issue across all the SDGs. The adoption of the gender mainstreaming approach endorsed by the 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action during the fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in September 1995 compromises the implementation of SDG 5. This chapter argues that by adopting a formalist approach to equality, SDG 5 does not fully recognize the differences among women – differences of class, race, disabilities, ethnicities, nationalities, religion, and those brought about by colonialism – and thus falls victim to the classical criticism of international law’s genderedness and essentialism.

Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 10, Reduced Inequalities, addresses one of the fundamental building blocks for the realization of all SDGs in a very unequal world. It emphasizes both interstate and intrastate inequality and, in so doing, goes much beyond what the 2000 Millennium Development Goals offered. SDG 10 is a central goal because inequality conditions the realization of many other SDGs, some of which also directly address inequality. In the context of international law, SDG 10 reflects in part existing equity measures, such as preferential and differential treatment. It may be seen as strengthening the equity context in economic law but does not go beyond what sustainable development law already provides. Its main contribution is to link different types of inequalities and provide a framework for linking sustainable development law, economic law, and human rights.

Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 12, Responsible Consumption and Production, operates in a context shaped by contrasts between thriving consumers and exploited workers and rampant unsustainable practices. This contribution critically discusses the areas of international law that are relevant for SDG 12, with a focus on international trade and investment regimes. It argues that the environmental and human rights agreements currently in force are much weaker than the powerful regimes of international economic law, whose main preoccupation is the liberalization of trade and investment and not the material footprints and redistributive consequences of sustainable production and consumption. With its focus on voluntarism and the lack of reference to key human rights instruments, SDG 12 is likely to reproduce the structural conditions that have generated enormous social and environmental damages rather than providing orientation for much needed transformative change.