ESG, to borrow a pandemic era phrase, is ‘essential services’ for businesses, investors, third sector and governments. It is a part of the plumbing for responsible capitalism. The terms responsible and just are critical and are constructs which allow for ethics to find the space with global capital. Strange bedfellows, right?

ESG is operational as much as strategic, and datafication allows it to be tactical. Somewhere lurking in the shadow of carbon is the community, which is being integrated in the ESG ecosystem with BHR and DEI.

To make ESG work is the glue called culture, which makes things stick beyond the SOP. ESG will need to outgrow itself and be BAU as marketing or operations, as ESG is operations itself.

#esgreporting

In the times we live in where data is easily available and learning is a click away, how we approach

– Meta Cognition
-Meta Emotion
– Meta Learning

is crucial to make sense. Value creation in the era of Generative AI and Chat GPT is a challenge of a different scale.

We need to remember data itself does not tell a story. ESG data deluge is empowering yet can lead to an overwhelm as ultimately concrete decisions need to be made by leaders to comply well and beyond with the constantly buffering goal post with regulatory innovation leading sustainability discourses.

The right questions need to be asked when we talk about ESG. What story do we need to tell?

For managers who feel ESG or Sustainability as a feel-good factor merely, it is an emergent business risk?

Opportunities are gauged with a growth mindset, and ESG is a lens for innovation.

Having a lot of conversations on expectations, failures and setbacks which are common yet are uncomfortable in the LinkedIn positive toxicity culture we reside in.

There will be setbacks and the closest among us will deal the hardest blow. A venture which I gave a full decade of my life tanked spectacularly. Gatekeepers will be horrible unless we serve their metrics.

Power is reality and like money it is a form of energy. The ability to start from zero is something we all can do. Move on with the lessons learnt as interesting.

Be kind. We will all land up in an ICU one day.

Interdisciplinarity is the prerequisite boundary condition for ESG as risk is a map where the valency of weighted averages at each space-time node is different. The single-issue specialist would not be able to grasp the risk associated with impact investing and transition finance. Teams of engineers, nature scientists and lawyers need to work with economists and corporate finance professionals to build products that finance change. The frontiers are spilling over with possibilities to innovate.

Tech is a perennial magnet for top talent as the opportunities for growth are present. ESG is getting there, but the fluid skills terrain will leave much to be asked for. Carbon is about reporting, also about trading and about technology. Carbon is vital as it is about survival and not about being an element on the periodic table taught in middle school.

Carbon will be culture soon. When you buy a product, one asks about the monetary price. The carbon impact will be part of that pricing strategy soon as the environmental and social cost.

The unseen spaces of migration infrastructure which fall through the literature gaps in the sending countries are mundane spaces such as photo studios and travel agencies who even in the era of the digital play a role as visa applications is hard copy.

The elderly uncle at the photo studio tucked away in the by lanes of a residential area was an encyclopedia of visa related information related to photo sizes.

He rattled off requirements for South Africa, Vietnam, and Turkey in a breath.

Similarly, the travel agent is a guide through the paperwork maze.

These are fixed nodes of transnational networks of circulation which are hidden from the theory gaze

Climate Action (as Change is underway) is a capital allocation problem. Capital access for transition is an imperative as other variables such as talent and technology gravitate towards wicked problems when resources are abundant.

ESG is a responsible capitalism issue, but climate action with its planetary risk implications is the ‘society as a whole’ problem to tackle at multiple scales.

#society #climateaction #esgreporting

The ushering in an era of open data in the ESG governance sphere brings out a radical transparency and trust among the investor community. The emergent risks of transnational climate litigation such as the shell case in Nigeria or modern slavery triggers in SE Asia, good reporting is beyond compliance as it is risk mitigation towards black swan activist action that can short a stock and collapse shareholder value.

Why should I do ESG reporting should not even be a question, rather what are my risks is a better frame to look at ESG.

#compliance#community#climatechange

The Gig Economy is a fancy term for informal economy labor without a social safety net, rolling back strides in social protection. Internet serfdom should not be masked.

We are all gig workers.

Sustainability or ESG is either the end or the means to an end. ESG needs to be viewed as a web of risks with each node as varied gradients. ESG is about risk related to investor value capture. Sustainability is a normative and fuzzy. The ends need to be defined, as sustainability can be an opening into restoration, rejuvenation, and resilience.

Climate resilience is a real goal, and everything converges around it.

#sustainability