Management & Law
Imagine opening the agenda for your next board meeting and seeing the Great Barrier Reef listed as a trustee.
Far-fetched? Perhaps not.
Recently, a Guardian article appeared about the Scottish Association for Marine Science formally appointing the ocean as a trustee on its board. The ocean is represented by environmental lawyer Helen Mitcheson, whose role is to ask how board decisions might affect the marine environment. Importantly, this role has been embedded in the organisation's constitution, making it part of the governance framework rather than a symbolic gesture.
I smiled when I read it. It sounded like one of those wonderfully quirky stories that occasionally captures public attention. But the more I reflected, the more I realised it was really a story about governance and responsibility.
Every board represents someone's interests. Directors routinely consider shareholders, employees, customers and financial performance. Yet every significant decision also affects people and places that are never represented around the board table: future generations, local communities and the natural environment.
The evidence supports this broader way of thinking. Organisations with formal climate governance arrangements produce stronger sustainability reporting and demonstrate superior environmental performance (Farooq & Muhammad, 2025; Fernández-Torres et al., 2025). Australia's first national study of nature-related governance found that more than 80 per cent of directors consider nature-related risks important, although many boards are still developing governance processes to address them (Australian Institute of Company Directors & University of Sydney Business School, 2025).
The ocean cannot speak for itself, yet it bears the consequences of countless human decisions. While CSIRO research reports a 39 per cent reduction in plastic litter along surveyed Australian metropolitan coastlines over the past decade, plastic and microplastics remain widespread (Brodie et al., 2025). More sobering: recent research identified microplastics in approximately one-third of fish collected for consumption across the Pacific, with Fiji, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu all significantly affected despite contributing relatively little to global plastic pollution (Dehm et al., 2026).
This broader perspective also reflects emerging values-based leadership research. Organisations demonstrating stronger adherence to Christian values also exhibit higher levels of social and environmental responsibility, suggesting that values have their greatest influence when they shape decision-making rather than organisational messaging (Dimic et al., 2024).
Perhaps giving the ocean a place in the governance conversation is not quite as eccentric as it first appears.
I don't expect Australian organisations to appoint the Great Barrier Reef as their next trustee. But perhaps that isn't really the point.
Whether viewed through the lens of governance, corporate social responsibility, ethics or faith, the story points to a similar conclusion: leadership is not only about representing the people in the room, but also about stewarding the interests of those who will live with today's decisions. That includes people, communities and the natural world, even when they have no voice at the table.
Sometimes an unexpected headline leaves us with a better question for the next board meeting: Who isn't represented when we make this decision?
Dr Monique Moore is MBA Convenor and Senior Lecturer in the School of Arts and Business at Avondale University.
References
Australian Institute of Company Directors & University of Sydney Business School. (2025). Nature enters the boardroom: Australia's first study of nature-related governance. AICD.
Brodie, S., Willis, K., Barrett, J., Fuller, M., Lawson, T. J., Mackay, M., Miller, M., Moeseneder, C., Roman, L., Schuyler, Q., Wilcox, C., & Hardesty, B. D. (2025). Drivers of environmental debris in metropolitan areas: A continental scale assessment. Marine Pollution Bulletin, 215, 117851. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2025.117851
Dehm, J., Brown, K. T., Drova, E., Varea, R., Botleng, J. V., Fe'ao, S., ... & Ford, A. K. (2026). Considering ecological traits of fishes to understand microplastic ingestion across Pacific coastal fisheries. PLOS ONE, 21(1), e0339852. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0339852
Dimic, N., Fatmy, V., & Vähämaa, S. (2024). Religiosity and corporate social responsibility: A study of firm-level adherence to Christian values in the United States. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 31(1), 396–413. https://doi.org/10.1002/csr.2576
Farooq, M., & Muhammad, H. (2025). Climate governance and sustainability reporting. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 32, 5430–5445. https://doi.org/10.1002/csr.3259
Fernández-Torres, Y., Gallego-Sosa, C., & Gutiérrez-Fernández, M. (2025). Do women board members contribute to companies' superior environmental performance? A literature review. Review of Managerial Science, 19, 1513–1565. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11846-024-00800-x
Kaminski, I. (2026, July 14). Giving nature a say: Why Scottish marine scientists appointed the ocean to their board of trustees. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jul/14/giving-nature-a-say-why-scottish-marine-scientists-appointed-the-ocean-to-their-board
Photo by Naja Bertolt Jensen on Unsplash