Talk to almost any GC in almost any sector and you will find one acronym that is increasingly on their minds and on their lips – ESG.

Environmental, Social and Governance issues are atop of the board agenda and are, therefore, a constant preoccupation for General Counsel and in-house legal teams.

If you are in any doubt about how significant ESG has become, just get a group of leading general counsel from very different sectors together and ask them.

That’s just what we did this summer when, as part of The Lawyer’s Marketing Leadership Summit, we brought together a panel of four leading GCs for a webinar on: “Choosing your ESG partner”.

It gave insight into GCs needs, and tested whether legal providers are providing the right support to in-house legal and the broader businesses. Importantly it was also a chance to ask – if not, then what are they getting wrong?

So why this focus on ESG issues now?

It is partly due to the growing urgency for action to tackle Climate Change. As we near this Autumn’s COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, demands for coordinated global action by governments, businesses, NGOs and consumers are intense, especially as we experience first-hand the terrible impact of Climate Change.

But ESG, of course, goes further than Climate Change, as vital as that issue is, to its roots in the shifting business agenda towards Stakeholder Capitalism and the longer-term approach to creating and protecting value for businesses’ material stakeholders. As The British Academy articulates today’s business paradigm shift: “The purpose of business is to profitably solve problems of people and planet, and not profit from causing problems.”

There is growing pressure for a “Just Transition” to a green economy, referenced in the Paris Climate accord and the acutely revealed inequalities throughout the Pandemic. A Just Transition is inherent to the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals, encompassing not just climate, but systemic issues of reducing inequality, creating decent and high-quality jobs and providing equal access to resources like clean energy and water. Companies are being pressed to act by (and be transparently accountable to) a breadth of stakeholders – consumers, employees, investors, regulators, media.

Continued