Beslik: ESG-räder slår mot förvaltarnas tomma löften

Environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) is an approach to evaluating the extent to which a corporation works on behalf of social goals that go beyond the role of a corporation to maximize profits on behalf of the corporation's shareholders. Typically, the social goals advocated within an ESG perspective include working to achieve a certain set of environmental goals, as well as a set of goals having to do with supporting certain social movements, and a third set of goals having to do with whether the corporation is governed in a way that is consistent with the goals of the diversity, equity, and inclusion movement.A variety of governmental organizations and financial institutions have devised ways to measure the extent to which a specific corporation is aligned with ESG goals. The most prominent global movement in this regards is the adoption of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by United Nations in 2015. The term ESG was popularly used first in a 2004 report titled “Who Cares Wins", which was a joint initiative of financial institutions at the invitation of UN. The report has been endorsed by 20 prominent institutions. In less than 20 years, the ESG movement has grown from a corporate social responsibility initiative launched by the United Nations into a global phenomenon representing more than US$30 trillion in assets under management. In the year 2019 alone, capital totaling US$17.67 billion flowed into ESG-linked products, an almost 525 percent increase from 2015, according to Morningstar. Critics claim ESG linked-products have not had and are unlikely to have the intended impact of raising the cost of capital for polluting firms, and have accused the movement of greenwashing.