This paper was completed as part of my Master's degree in Cooperation, Development and Social Economy at UIC Barcelona.
RESEARCH QUESTION
Do ESG reporting frameworks, which are the disclosure systems cities use to report climate performance to bodies like CDP and C40, actually deliver procedural justice to the communities most affected by climate change? This thesis tests that question against Barcelona’s Climate Plan, a city widely seen as a best-case example of participatory, justice-oriented climate governance.
APPROACH
Using critical-interpretive document analysis, I coded Barcelona's Climate Plan 2018–2030, its 2024 CDP-ICLEI disclosure and a C40 case study on the Superblocks programme against two frameworks: ESG governance characteristics and the participation and accountability provisions of the UN Pact for the Future, the most recent multilateral instrument articulating these norms. Selected as a strategic best-case, Barcelona has institutional resources, prior participatory precedent, and a stated justice mandate. If procedural gaps exist here, they are likely more severe elsewhere.
KEY FINDINGS
ESG disclosure frameworks consistently measure whether participation happened, not whether it shaped decisions. Barcelona's citizen co-production process generated real proposals and a formal return mechanism, but no documentation ties specific input to specific plan decisions.
Vulnerable populations are tracked as reporting categories (checkboxes, dropdown selections) rather than as accountability subjects, across every governance question examined in Barcelona's CDP submission. This pattern is structural, not accidental: ESG accountability architecture answers to rating bodies, not to affected communities. This is a design feature that persists even where equity and inclusion language is present.
WHY IT MATTERS
As cities adopt ESG reporting standards, this thesis offers a transferable diagnostic for identifying where disclosure-driven accountability substitutes for, rather than delivers, genuine community accountability. The analysis is interpretive and structural rather than causal: it demonstrates that existing governance architecture cannot verify procedural justice was delivered, not that it definitively wasn't. Based on the findings, disclosure frameworks should verify that community input demonstrably shaped governance decisions, monitoring frameworks should assess the quality and inclusiveness of participatory processes rather than counting outputs and actions completed, and monitoring indicators should be disaggregated by vulnerability group so outcomes for the most exposed populations are separately trackable.
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