The advisory opinion from the UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ), clearing the way for countries to sue each other over climate change, is a watershed moment.

Britain’s listed boards face a once-in-a-generation policy pivot: voluntary ESG “good practice” is giving way to hard-edged legal duties that bite across data, supply chains, product design and—even more visibly—the P&L. Mapping these external pressures onto the Unified Countdown Framework (UCF) risk register turns headline anxiety into actionable governance.