IGF 2025 Networking Session #237 Enhancing Investor Advocacy: A Multistakeholder Approach

We have reached a tipping point. Not only is the speed with which new technologies are being introduced challenging the ability of states to effectively regulate their impact, but also the rush by states around the world to take advantage of the purported promise of AI is tipping global power dynamics toward the corporations that control our internet infrastructure, communications networks, and data, and threatening to undermine efforts to combat climate change and to promote long-term sustainability and human rights. In particular, it is shifting geopolitical power from states to the multinational corporations building AI chips and foundation models and to other companies that base their products and services on them. To paraphrase Creative Commons founder and Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig’s observation from the early 2000s, code has become law. This shift raises a challenge of representation for people, whose agency is curtailed by this shift, not only by the binaries implied by the technologies themselves (you either use it on our terms, or you don’t) but also by the diminished representation of people’s voices in the development and deployment of the hardware and software that now shapes their lives. In the absence of effective regulation and avenues for public input, multistakeholder-driven mechanisms to improve corporate transparency and accountability are needed now more than ever. To equalize the imbalance of power that comes with such a shift, people must follow the money and look to ways to influence capital—both private, in the form of venture capital and private equity, and public, in the form of institutional and retail equity investing. Already, civil society and sustainable investors are engaging in advocacy to help highlight some of the most worrisome harms, raising issues directly with companies and filing shareholder resolutions. But we need to diversify our approaches, and develop more common knowledge and common ground between civil society and institutional investors to seize the current opportunity to create long-term political and social equilibrium that is good for people, companies, and states. This world café–style networking session, to be held under Chatham House Rule to enable participants to speak and share freely, will bring together sustainable investors, corporate and government-based sustainability advocates, global civil society leaders, policy makers, and shareholder democracy and political economy researchers to brainstorm pathways for building and strengthening connections and information-sharing pipelines between these diverse groups for long-term environmental and economic sustainability and preservation of momentum toward achieving the SDGs and a human rights-centered economy. We will brainstorm strategies, tactics, and guidance that can be adopted and deployed by a range of actors to amplify sustainable investors’ and civil society voices in helping companies better understand the risks posed by general-purpose technologies like AI and to adhere to the UN Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights, established climate targets, and the protection of human agency in an age of automation. The gathering may lend itself to continued convening, perhaps as a dynamic coalition. Reading: Open MIC Reports on Tech Accountability: Finance-Focused Strategies (https://www.openmic.org/reports) HC Türk to Forum on Business and Human Rights: “The world looks to business to play its part” (https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements-and-speeches/2024/11/hc-turk-forum-…) Sabhanaz Rashid Diya, “Applying International Human Rights Principles for AI Governance” (https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements-and-speeches/2024/11/hc-turk-forum-…) Maya Recanati, “Human Rights and Democracy in the Quantum Age” (https://www.justsecurity.org/108168/quantum-age/) Heartland Initiative, “The Saliency Materiality Nexus” (https://heartland-initiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/The-Salienc…)

We will host a virtual world cafe–style breakout group for the online attendees, much as in-room attendees. All participants will be able to hear the summary of key takeaways. We can use Zoom or any other virtual meeting platform.