Global Compliance

Environmental, Social, & Governance (ESG) Risk Assessment Roadmap

Published on 8th Feb 2021

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Environmental, Social, & Governance (ESG) impact is playing an increasingly important role in the evaluation of investments, suppliers and corporate performance.

There is a rapidly growing recognition that value is about more than pure financial returns. By engaging with those that avoid contributing to climate change, pollution, and human rights and labour abuses, businesses can reduce reputational risk and encourage more responsible businesses practices.

Consequently, there is a growing expectation from investors and stakeholders that businesses will report on non-financial issues, risks and opportunities with the same discipline and rigour as financial information. This is becoming increasingly reinforced by legislation mandating non-financial issues businesses are required to report upon.

Working out what a business needs to do and how to do it, is not straightforward. The UN Sustainable Development Goals are often used as a starting point, but setting objectives and benchmarking against them can be challenging. There is no one-size fits all approach. What there is, is a fast developing body of universal, and sector and issues specific, metrics and disclosures, within differing schemes, frameworks and guidelines, that can help businesses measure their ESG performance and assist them in meeting their compliance obligations in a sensible and justifiable way. Benchmarking sustainable business performance in a clear, transparent, comparable way is challenging but also important if you are going to drive the value for the business that comes from achievement on ESG.

Osborne Clarke's global compliance risk assessment roadmaps are designed to help businesses understand and identify key information and issues it will need to take into account to developing its approach to a wide range of Global Compliance areas. Having answered these questions, our Global Compliance experts can make an assessment of your policies and procedures and advise what measures to take to address any risks.

For more information, please get in touch with Katie Vickery or Chris Wrigley.

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* This article is current as of the date of its publication and does not necessarily reflect the present state of the law or relevant regulation.

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