Summary and PPT of my Presentation: "The Just Transitions of Risk—Human Rights, Sustainability and the ESG Wars" to be Given at the Just Transitions Conference (University of Dundee; 7 September 2023)

 

I was delighted to join a number of esteemed colleagues for a consideration of Environmental, Social, and Governance Risk (ESG) measures as a phenomenon, as a method, and as a means of shifting the fundamentals nor ative narratives of economic activity in liberal democratic and post colonial states (ESG in Marxist Leninist states follows its own trajectories, those are closely parallel in effect to the liberal democratic developments).  Our panel is part of the upcoming Just Transitions Conference 7-8 September 2023; University of Dundee (7-8 September 2023)  (registration here; program here). 

 Out panel, "Just Transition and Business – Chair Claire O'Brien, University of Dundee) includes a number of marvelous speakers:

• Tara Van Ho -Without Reforming the Corporate Purpose, All Of This Is Pointless
• Alexandra R Harrington – Multisectoral Just Transitions to a Low Carbon Economy in a Post-Pandemic World
• Caroline Lichuma – The Vernacularization of the Just Transition Concept: A Role for National Action Plans on Business and Human Rights
• Larry Catá Backer – The Just Transitions of Risk—Human Rights, Sustainability and the ESG Wars
• Zoumpoulia Amaxilati – Decarbonisation of the Shipping Industry, Just Transition, and the Role of International Maritime Labour Law

My presentation, "The Just Transitions of Risk—Human Rights, Sustainability and the ESG Wars," builds on recent work around the sometimes not so subtle and not so hidden agendas of some who seek to advance a particular vision of ESG modalities:

The presentation considers the context and consequences of the movement toward the insertion of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) risk/impact factors in a variety of contexts around investment, economic activity, and the management of systemic risk. This, in turn, is aligned with movements toward private and public efforts to achieve convergence with human rights, sustainability, and climate change related principles, and to embed these risk/impact parameters through mandatory measures. The result has been the transformation of ESG from risk to impact measures, and its reconstitution as a platform within which producers and consumers of risk and related standards of acceptable decision making within risk parameters, is sketched out. To that end, the evolution of the character of ESG from an investment risk assessment devices toward more comprehensive systems for the evaluation of project risk, and as a means of implementing risk reduction cultures grounded in the principle of prevention-mitigation-remedy was discussed. The application of ESG as risk factors bearing on financial decisions making, decisions to engage in specific projects, the use of ESG risk assessment as impact measures guiding decisions abut internal operations and corporate business, and its use in organizing the private law of production chains, is considered. The effects of growing and robust markets in ESG assessments suggest challenges to the character and utility of ESG modalities as a means of nudging cultures of acceptable business behaviors and forms of decision making. That, in turn, requires unpacking the great utility of ESG--as a vessel through which ideological battles over the normative structures of economic activity can be undertaken beyond the spotlight of democratic engagement and in the shadows of apparently technical methodological techniques. At the same time, the utility of ESG as a vessel for undertaking this ideologically charged narrative of economic activity (including the role of markets, acceptability of risk taking, the profit principle, and corporate purpose) narrative is undertaken. Here, one encounters a continuation of the underlying normative battles over the meta-narratives of a half generation of soft law measures--the SGDs and the UN Guiding principles for Business and Human Rights among them--and their implications (through the language and modalities built into ESG of risk-response principles) for rationalizing economic activity as social and political instruments. It is in this context that one can better understand the just transitions of risk.

The PPT follows.  PPT may be accessed HERE. Paper draft will be circulated when completed.