Solving hard problems is always hard. Wicked problems such as climate adaptation or preparing for the next pandemic will need a different level of thinking, doing, and building.

The question is what are the incentives available for the actors to configure together to make sure there is enough in the process for all?

The pillars of the ESG trifecta are all deep subject matter areas in themselves. Yet they make sense or matter not for the green premium but as a calibration factor. Environmental & Social elements are both externalities which are priced in a fashion to internalize them. The Internal Price of Carbon or a Biodiversity Price in the future through impact accounting are mechanisms. Carbon and Biodiversity are tangled with each other. Governance is an input. ESG are tied in through an ANT network as nodes in a risk map.

ESG risk and impact accounting are joined at the hip. Reporting to Ratings Journey has impact accounting somewhere in the middle of the continuum. ESG as a future making approach channelizing funds for a just energy transition is a real end goal. ESG is a core aspect of the ‘Just’ in Just Energy Transition. Making sense of the interlinkages is vital as understanding is patchy at best even among practitioners.

#esgstrategy

The cascade of reporting ‘upgrades’ in the ESG space is disclosure driven. Disclosure as a driver reflects the climate zeitgeist, we reside in. The reporting pull will enable creation of sustainability data architecture within organizations and organizations will report in turn to various regulators and proxy regulators. The data architecture will create the impulse to comply and win in the unique environment where aspects of the triple bottom line are no longer. It is the way businesses are done. Impact is Business as Usual.

Impact will shape capital flows as well as recipients of that capital. A circular economy of impact is emerging. The M&E of the impact capital is the frontier of reporting that will entail creativity as materiality is context based.

The paradoxes of context and standardization will be features rather than bugs of the ESG data architecture.

#sustainability #environment #data #impact #esg

Net Positive is a goal as well as a journey with several interim milestones. How it is experienced at various spatiotemporal junctures by various stakeholders in terms of pay offs will determine how the buy ins are generated.

A new category of investments will emerge akin to patient capital for the planet, where being climate positive will be the primary payoff. If the conventional markets are not ready to price a climate asset fairly, it does not mean that other investment assets should not move in and price them.

SWFs and Pension Funds will find the generational scale of climate assets viable as even a metro project or a power plant has a 25-year tenure.

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