Multinational Corporations and Climate Change
Subtitle
Risks, Responsibilities, and Resilience
How do global firms confront the defining challenge of our era? Drawing from international business, political economy, and environmental policy, Jonas Gamso offers an integrated framework for understanding how multinational corporations manage physical, transition, liability, and reputational climate risks through strategies of adaptation, avoidance, transfer, diversification, and acceptance. Blending rigorous empirical analysis with detailed case studies of Ørsted, ExxonMobil, and Saudi Aramco, among others, he reveals how companies make strategic decisions amid accelerating climate impacts and shifting policy landscapes, while also illuminating the effects of public policy and international relations. The book provides essential insights for scholars of international relations, business, and development, as well as for policymakers and practitioners seeking to align economic competitiveness with global sustainability.
Bio
Jonas Gamso is the Deputy Dean of Knowledge Enterprise and an associate professor in the Thunderbird School of Global Management, as well as a Senior Global Futures Scholar in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory. He is the author of Multinational Corporations and Climate Change: Risks, Responsibilities, and Resilience and the coauthor of Border Control Without Walls: Managing Migration with Foreign Aid (both published in 2026 by Cambridge University Press). Additionally, he is the academic director of the UN Global Compact’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Innovation Accelerator program at Thunderbird and he manages Thunderbird's Ocean Diplomacy Lab.
Praise for this book
Jonas Gamso's new book is a tour de force on how global businesses navigate climate risks and opportunities. With empirical rigor, Gamso explores the shift from investor flight to the rise of green business models, offering insights into the uneven distribution of climate finance in our warming world.
Lily Hsueh Associate Professor of Economics and Public Policy, Arizona State University and author of ‘Corporations at Climate Crossroads: Multilevel Governance, Public Policy, and Global Climate Action
We know that states cannot address climate change alone, and that state action depends on firms. This book shows how climate risks drive some firms to adapt and seize new opportunities. Our best hope is a feedback loop between business and policy change, and Gamso explains how such dynamics can be triggered.
Jean-Frédéric Morin Canada Research Chair in International Political Economy, Université Laval, Québec
