ESGs: The Signposts for Your Best Future
2022 will be a big year for the business realities of climate change. The last 3 of 4 reports from the IPCC are due out across the year, and COP27 will hopefully present the world with the bridges countries are going to put in place to reach the 1.5 Celsius goal. Meanwhile, investors are increasingly demanding ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) reporting.
To help businesses thrive, we ask this simple question:
Are you taking into account the realities of climate change, water shortages, food/land shortages (and everything else embedded in unmet SDG targets) when you are looking at your future strategies?
- You (and your supply chain) have to start paying $50/ton on carbon emissions?
- Water is no longer free?
- Water is the commodity that people go to war over?
- There is a 56% increase in global food demand over the coming decade, requiring the addition of agricultural land nearly twice the size of India (and the water that goes with it)? 1
- Continued loss of biodiversity? 2
- Widespread political, economic, and social instability?
Try to look at the often arduous ESG reporting as insight work, uncovering the signals and signposts (including do not enter and deadend) to the path forward.
This data shows where future realities bump up against your current business model. For strategy it is a form of SWOT analysis. It is quantitative research that informs you and your organization where to create innovative new approaches and strategies that will thrive in the future, while also championing a better future.
The future as a 2-way street (double materiality):
How ESG issues will impact your organization (outside-in) and how your organization can impact ESG issues (inside-out).
Where are you exposed to environmental, social, and governance issues, and most importantly, what can you do about it? Not as a defence, but as a strategic advantage.
Recognizing the opportunity is the first step.
Be Courageous can uncover, innovate, and activate strategies and solutions that help us create a better world together.
1 Source: Creating a Sustainable Food Future: World Resource Institute
2 “Findings by Swiss Re (2020) indicate 55% of global GDP depends on high functioning biodiversity. The UN’s Global Biodiversity Outlook highlighted a worsening picture, with only six of the 20 biodiversity targets partially met by the 2020 deadline.” GRI
