ESG is seen as an aggressive risk metric for factoring into DCF on a balance sheet, but when we look ahead as regeneration and resilience it transforms into a paradigm fit for net zero.

When i look across the Arabian Sea from Juhu Beach or the Gateway of India in Bombay, I see the shores of the Sharqiyah and the Batinah Coast, of a Bayt lost, alive in the memories of wet feet in Sur or Shatti Al Qurum, as water splashes the feet in Silver Beach, Juhu.

Cataloging, critiquing, analyzing, intellectualizing is only part of the climate action story. Building solutions rather than sermons will enable ripple effects to bring the needed interventions for adaptation.

In the era of ESG, DEI and Responsible Capitalism, Women’s Day is each day.

We celebrate the moment to normalize the elation to embed in the quotidian.

Happy Women’s Day!

There is an antidote to competence greenwashing coined by Dr Kim, which is deep ESG expertise built over 15 years in my case in eleven countries. Certifications are great for signaling but they might not be the skill levels needed on the job. Deep skills are developed over the years.

If one perceives ESG as reporting towards climate compliance, one is clearly missing the woods for the trees as sustainability is about survival at the planetary scale, however at the human scale it is dignity of work that drives any transformation, digital or net zero. Without people as key actors in a process which is participatory rather than performative, no climate transition dialogue can achieve its stated outcomes. ESG at the entry level is compliance, as regulatory hygiene but higher up on the value curve it can serve as a lens to solve wicked problems for the transition’s era.

Software can capture data, and churn out a report, but culture will determine enterprise value. ESG is about enterprise value. The cacophony regarding ESG is generative, as it mainstreams ESG as business and reporting frameworks give guidance on how to embark on the journey. We are dealing with businesses and sometimes sustainability professionals forget that sustainability is not the only element on the C Suite agenda, it is merely one of them.

Mumbai has political iconography at every traffic signal and memorials are place making on the power cartography of this great Indian Ocean City. Ambedkarite parties occupy a lot of attention real estate on hoardings although insignificant on the electoral map. There are more fractions of the Republican Party of India than there are Communist Party segments splintered across the country. BSP is a subaltern political force which has lost significant steam in the Saffron Raj. The strange data point here is that the RPI (A) wins seats in Nagaland rather than Nanded, as Mr. Athavle, the federal social justice minister plays a symbolic role in state politics here in Mumbai.

Here is a memorial to the great shaper of Maharashtra and Mumbai’s politics past, present and future.

Jai Maharashtra.

I speak more Bangla in Muscat and Singapore and other spaces in the south Asian Labour Diaspora than in Mumbai, the city of my birth. I speak Bangla with my Baba- a Bihari by birth who grew up in Bolpur than my Bengali mother from Bombay. I speak with my linguist mother in the Queens Tongue.

Ami Banglai Gaan Gaai.

I understood the essence of Ekushe in Singapore at Banglar Kantha where I learnt culture travels, anchors, and offers a sense of belonging in the Probash.

Joy Bangla.

ESG risk can be mapped at scales, and each scale will result in different magnitudes and characters of affect. Labor issues at the plant level is an operational issue at the shop floor level aka scale, but it is a crucial culture data point at the level of human rights reporting to the bourses.

The micro and the macro scales juxtapose and intermingle when we consider decision making for responsible business. Is carbon a local and regional scale pollutant first, or a planetary scale GHG impacting climate impact?

Thinking in nodes and networks rather than as binary fixtures shall help practitioners grapple with ESG risk which is evolving and mutating at each spatiotemporal juncture.

The unquantifiable ‘S’ in ESG is the operational glue which is the circulatory system at various scales. The numerous studies within the large tent ambit of the Social are:

– Stakeholder Engagement Plan

– Social and Labour Audits

– Human Rights Risk Assessments including Due Diligence

– Worker Well Being Studies

– Social Impact Assessments for Infrastructure Permitting and ESG Compliance for sustainable finance

– DEI Strategy Mapping

– Resettlement Action Plans

– Community Investment Plans

– M&E Studies

– Human Resources Training

Communities of practice include your employees and vendors and motivated people who are good for business.