Understanding ESG: Environmental, Social, and Governance Framework Explained (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: ESG stands for Environmental, Social, and Governance. You can think of it as an analysis framework to help measure and quantify the degree to which an organization is operating in a sustainable manner. Environmental assessment criteria help stakeholders understand an organization's impact on the environment and the climate, like its greenhouse gas emissions, and its management team's stewardship over natural resources, like fresh water. While understanding environmental risk and impact is a big part of the ESG framework, the concept of sustainability in this context extends well beyond just the environment. The S pillar, social, examines an organization's social impact. It seeks to understand how well leadership manages relationships with stakeholders, including fair wages for workers, generating positive outcomes in the communities where they operate, and taking accountability for the actions and inactions of supply chain partners in other parts of the world. The G, as we know, is governance. So how is the firm led and managed? Stakeholders are increasingly taking note that a healthy corporate governance function can make or break progress in the E and the S realms, but can even create existential threats for business operations more broadly. ESG as we know it evolved from a number of older, sustainability-themed acts and frameworks, including EHS, Environmental Health and Safety, and CSR, or Corporate Social Responsibility. But these older frameworks took more of a philanthropic approach, implying that management teams should do good because it's the right thing to do. What's somewhat unique about ESG is that it looks at these issues through the lens of business risk and opportunity, which tends to resonate more clearly with the investment community. These rapidly changing market and non-market conditions have created the ESG landscape as we see it today. This includes the emergence of ESG rating agencies, ESG scores, mandatory public reporting, often called ESG disclosure, and countless sustainability-themed funds and investment strategies.