The Sustainability Credibility Problem
- IJLLR Journal
- Dec 10, 2025
- 2 min read
Updated: Dec 11, 2025
Ms. Mabel Sebastian, B.A. LL.B., Government Law College, Mumbai
ABSTRACT
Today, corporate sustainability is increasingly marred by a friction between public claims and operational reality. Greenwashing, greenwishing, and greenhushing, although they are very different in nature, their impact is similar - environmental hazard is veiled. Regulatory frameworks across jurisdictions are making better benchmarks around evidence and accountability. Yet selective enforcement and inconsistent definitions leave room for selective disclosure. This article contends that sustainability should no longer serve as a branding decor. True corporate responsibility demands a fusion between transparency and accurate reporting of operations.
I. Introduction
There is something unique about corporate relationships with the climate crisis. Every annual report reads like a too-good-to-be-true message, with overpromises, soft-focused photographs of leaves, and a carbon neutral future that conveniently begins in 2050 or any year safely distant enough that no present executive will be held accountable.
Climate ambition has become the corporate equivalent to good mannerisms; expected, polished, and performed with just enough conviction to appear deliberate though rarely with clarity genuine commitment would demand. But once this varnish of corporate optimism is scratched, the contradictions appear. Corporate sustainability, at the moment, is not a linear narrative of claims and counterclaims; instead, it is a spectrum of disclosure practices that involves investor scrutiny and reputational risk. This spectrum can be best understood via three recurring patterns: greenwashing - selective or embellished environmental claims; greenwishing - shaped by ambitions yet largely unmoored climate aspirations; and greenhushing - deliberate non-disclosure.
II. Greenwashing - When courage ends at the press release
Greenwashing is, by now, the elder statesman of climate-communication dysfunction. It survives because it works, at least long enough for a press cycle. Many corporations have positioned a symbolic initiative at the centre stage, exaggerated its significance and, more importantly, concealed the emissions-heavy scaffolding behind it.
