Responsabile Scientifico

• BALDIN Gregorio (DiSUM)

Partecipanti al progetto

• BIALE Enrico (DiSUM)

Titolo del progetto

• Rethinking the Theory and Practice of Greenwashing

Ente finanziatore

• 
  MUR - Ministero dell'Università e Ricerca

Programma di finanziamento

• PRIN - Progetti di Ricerca di Rilevante Interesse Nazionale (dal 2020)

Bando di riferimento

• PRIN 2022 PNRR

Anno di presentazione del progetto

• 2022

Anno di approvazione del progetto

• 2023

Project ID / numero contratto

• P2022ALLMW_002

Durata del progetto

• 24 mesi

Inizio del progetto

• 30/11/2023

Fine del progetto

• 29/11/2025

Ente capofila

• UNIGE - Università degli Studi di Genova

Progetto approvato - Contributo unità di ricerca del Dipartimento

• €91.781,00

Sustainable Development Goals - Agenda 2030

Keyword

• Climate change
• social justice
• democratic deliberation
• normative political theory
• environmentalism

Stato del progetto

• Approvato

Abstract

• This research project challenges the popular view of greenwashing as a misleading communication that violates the trust of green consumers and can be contained by companies self-monitoring and stricter self-regulating business models. Based on an account of the democratic public sphere that is closer to empirical reality, more sensitive to asymmetries in power relations, and apt to inform normative political theorizing, this project aims to build a new way to conceptualize greenwashing. The starting hypothesis is that greenwashing should be studied from a broader perspective. This means to redescribe greenwashing as a result of distorted justificatory practices and framing mechanisms that on the one hand make citizens lose focus on how green claims are substantiated and, on the other hand, produce barriers in the public engagement with climate change. The research therefore aims at conceptually define, for the first time, a socially situated model of the distributed social responsibility for the wrongs of greenwashing, in order to strengthen ameliorative political action that can monitor and assess companies' green claims. The project has 3 objectives: (1) To develop the first socially situated account of greenwashing that enables a critical scrutiny of the use of misleading green claims; (2) To explore the normative foundations of a new model attributing shared, yet differentiated, responsibilities for monitoring the environmental performance of companies; (3) To develop a set of enabling democratic practices and communicative channels which can mobilise a critical mass of citizens to participate in counteracting the root causes of greenwashing. The project will be implemented by two research units, working in close collaboration with one another via regular joint seminars. Dissemination of the results will be both academic and non-academic, involving not only articles in peer-reviewed international journals, contributions to online magazines and newspapers, workshops, conferences, and a website, but also panels at key climate conferences, and staging events featuring activists and policy makers at national public festivals.