Tuesday, February 21, 2023

ESG: What Bureaucrats and Buyers Want but the World Doesn’t Need

 

  • The expectation for firms to disclose information regarding environmental, social, and governance (ESG) matters is receiving increased attention in the mainstream media, and rightly so.

  • Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, a shift occurred within the business realm.

  • The growing affluence of advanced markets was ripe for a moral charge.

  • In 2012, at the World Federation of Advertisers’ annual conference, industry executives declared social responsibility to be instrumental for building brands and revenue streams, and over time the UN’s Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), devised by the UNEP, was adopted for assessing and verifying ESG-related activities.

  • It seems firms are aiming to “align capitalism with what society wants from it,” as stated by Bank of America’s CEO Brian Moynihan at Davos last month, which is why it should be no surprise that more and more advertising dollars are being put towards corporate promotion of ESG every day.

  • So, although criticisms of ESG are on the rise, a pivot in portfolio management back to frameworks focused on corporate growth rather than cause-related ones seems unlikely.

https://www.aier.org/article/esg-what-bureaucrats-and-buyers-want-but-the-world-doesnt-need/

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