Stratospheric Ozone Depletion
Not transgressed: stratospheric ozone depletion is one of the two boundaries not breached. The Stockholm Resilience Centre's 2023 update found it the only boundary process where pressure is not increasing. UNEP projects recovery to 1980 levels by around 2040 for most of the world, 2045 over the Arctic, and 2066 over Antarctica.
Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
Why shareholder democracy is helpful
The ozone layer is healing under the Montreal Protocol, which has phased out nearly 99 percent of banned ozone-depleting substances. That success was delivered by binding treaty and government enforcement rather than by voluntary corporate action. The clearest recent test confirmed the pattern. Illegal CFC-11 production in China's polyurethane foam sector, documented by the Environmental Investigation Agency across 18 companies in 10 provinces, was ended by Chinese state enforcement. NOAA data show emissions back at pre-2013 levels by 2021. The offending firms were mostly small, private, and outside shareholder reach. The strongest remaining corporate lever is nitrous oxide, which the UN Environment Programme identifies as the single most important ozone-depleting emission of the 21st century. The Montreal Protocol does not regulate nitrous oxide. The gas flows largely from fertilizer use, where listed producers and their lobby shape nitrogen policy. Owners pressing the same nitrogen levers described under biogeochemical flows would therefore also protect ozone. Listed chemical companies additionally control feedstock leakage from their plants and the pace of the Kigali Amendment transition. These levers guard the margin of a recovery whose trajectory an enforced treaty has already set. Unlike the contested chemical-control frameworks where industry lobbying is the live obstacle, this regime is settled, so the shareholder contribution stays helpful rather than decisive.
How this was scoredHelpful
Helpful. Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
- Planetary boundaries, Stockholm Resilience Centre, 2025 (2023 update described)
- Ozone layer recovery is on track, helping avoid global warming by 0.5degC, UN Environment Programme, 2023-01-09
- New EIA report uncovers illegal CFC-11 production and use in China, Environmental Investigation Agency, 2018-07-09
- Emissions of Ozone-Destroying CFC-11 Back on Decline (Pt. I), Natural Resources Defense Council, 2021-02-10
- Nitrous Oxide (N2O): The Dominant Ozone-Depleting Substance Emitted in the 21st Century, UNEP Ozone Secretariat, 2009 (accessed 2026-08)
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Briefed shareholders on refrigerant management and backed the first shareholder resolution asking a US retailer to scale back hydrofluorocarbons, the gases governed by the Montreal Protocol's Kigali Amendment.
Coordinated investors pressing Yara International, the largest nitrogen fertiliser producer, to set science-based targets covering the Scope 3 emissions released when its products are applied to fields, which include nitrous oxide.
Fertiliser Giant Yara Must Tackle Massive Emissions, Shareholders Say, DeSmog, 2024-05
2 campaigns on record
Adopt science-based targets aligned with 1.5 degrees, including comprehensive Scope 3 targets covering emissions from the field application of its fertilisers.
With Cardano, Ethos Foundation, PGGM, Greater Manchester Pension Fund
Result: not stated in source
Fertiliser Giant Yara Must Tackle Massive Emissions, Shareholders Say, DeSmog, 2024-05
Disclose how the company will limit its climate impact by increasing the scale, pace and rigour of its plans to scale back hydrofluorocarbons used in its operations.
Result: 5.5 percent
The vote cleared the 5 percent threshold needed to refile the resolution the following year.
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is Doughnut Economics's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.