Sustainability Weekly — Week 11
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Who else is tired of living in unprecedented times? At the moment it seems like what the world desperately needs is some stability and long-term thinking. Going from catastrophe to catastrophe might sometimes make the world feel like a hopeless place, especially when world leaders seem to keep making the wrong decisions.
However, at the same time the state of the world highlights the need for sustainable thinking, and maybe more importantly shows us all that questions of global stability are concrete and impactful.
📈 This thought is highlighted in posts like this one from Barnaby Patchett.
In this post we can see that a bleak ESG outlook might be something else entirely. I believe that we are slowly moving toward a world, where the imminence of sustainability related risk means that sustainability is more front and centre. This means that we need to make sustainability concrete, and the trends outlined in the post seem to support that idea.
ESG is dying. Nobody wants to hear about Net Zero anymore. You might not like it, but if your comms is focused on any of the following, the media, search, and social media stats are bleak… 📉 Net Zero 2050: Searches plummeted 40% in 2025. 📉 ESG: Searches down 35% from the 2022 peak. 📉 Vertical Farming: Media mentions dropped 50%. 📉 First-Gen Biofuels: Social mentions down 25%. 📉 Voluntary Carbon Offsets: Trashed in high-profile Guardian exposés and peer-reviewed studies. This isn’t a value judgement, it’s just a fact. The conversation is always changing. The good news is that people are still talking about sustainability, a lot! If you’re in the space, here’s what’s dominating the media coverage and social media chat right now: 🔥 Water: Searches for “water stewardship” and “corporate water stress” are up 65%. 🔥 Biodiversity: The #NaturePositive hashtag on LinkedIn was up 120% last year. 🔥 Compliance: CSRD and EUDR readiness queries are up 300%. 🔥 Adaptation: News headlines about “climate resilience” just overtook “carbon mitigation” for the first time. 🔥 Human Rights: Searches for “supply chain labour rights” climbed 45%. You can’t control what’s newsworthy – but you can lead the #sustainability conversations that are happening now.
🏭 In keeping with the theme from the earlier post comes this one from Andreas Rasche.
He uses the term “greenhushing” here to describe a type of climate policy that is not marketed as such. Rather the language used in the actual bill is the language of risk, supply lines, industrial sovereignty and economic resilience. Perhaps this is the approach that will get the masses to be on the same page about sustainable development.
The Commission’s new Industrial Accelerator Act (launched yesterday) follows a deliberate greenhushing tactic – it is a climate law in disguise. This shows that the EU’s overall “sustainability policy formula” is changing: 1️⃣ Decarbonization = sovereignty and fossil fuel independence 2️⃣ Industrial clean tech = increased economic resilience 3️⃣ Public Procurement = scaling green solutions 4️⃣ EU Single Market = increased geopolitical leverage 5️⃣ Circularity = strategic autonomy (e.g. recycling rare earths) Sustainability is becoming a tool to work against the weaponisation of EU dependencies – because the latter “poses a serious threat to the Union’s resilience, competitiveness, economic security and strategic autonomy.” 👉 The EU is internalising sustainability into a geopolitical-industrial logic. This is worth noting in the midst of all other discussions…! The big unknown is the impact on the green transition.
📝 The new EFRAG update is out! So, what is actually interesting here? Two things were notable to me.
Increased focus on VSME adoption and a EFRAG call for expression of interests on VSME digital tools and platforms.
More ISSB integration. This is in line with global trends, as we can see many countries adopting ISSB based reporting standards.
🇰🇷 Global sustainability reporting is moving east.
This article from ESG today discusses the Korean government’s plans to begin mandatory sustainability reporting in 2028, and kicking off from the previous point the Korean standards will be based on the ISSB standards. The mandatory reporting will hit the largest companies first, with smaller companies coming behind based readiness and international developments. This adds to a growing trend of Asian countries becoming the leaders of sustainability reporting globally.
🧑🔬 This is fascinating! A fantastic piece of research from Charles H.
Cho, PhD, CPA outlining the misalignment in the importance of different sustainability topics between Nestle and their stakeholders.
This shows why stakeholder engagement is crucial, and why transparency matters. If the focus in sustainability work is too internal it will lead to sustainability communication that feels misaligned, surface level and just wrong to stakeholders who are affected by the company. This is why it is so important to conduct a materiality assessment where the interests and views of the stakeholders are truly integrated. Thank you for your valuable research!
Do companies prioritize what stakeholders actually care about? In a study that was just accepted and published in Sustainability Accounting Management and Policy Journal, my co-authors and I examine Nestlé as a case study to compare the company’s Sustainable Development Goal (#SDG) #materiality matrix with #stakeholder discussions on #Twitter, and mapped SDG #interconnectedness through social network analysis. What did we find? While there is some overlap, our results show a striking #disconnect and #misalignment… While Stakeholders overwhelmingly focus on water, sanitation, climate, and biodiversity, Nestlé prominently emphasizes certain SDGs and elevates other priorities – notably around responsible consumption and nutrition – in its materiality matrix. In other words, what #stakeholders care deeply about (their loudest concerns) appears comparatively muted in the corporate prioritization agenda—and what the #company highlights as material issues is not always what stakeholders are most concerned about... Our #interconnectedness analysis also shows that the “SDG network” looks different depending on who you ask. What does this all mean and why does it matters? At minimum, our findings suggest that corporate materiality processes may not fully capture stakeholder priorities. At worst, they point toward a form of selective sustainability #storytelling that looks uncomfortably close to #greenwashing. If materiality assessments overlook stakeholder priorities (#elevating reputation-enhancing themes while #ignoring more controversial issues), the line between meaningful reporting and curating a more comfortable narrative starts to blur, hence credibility and trust may erode. Therefore, we argue that companies should: Use alternative data sources (including social media). Analyze SDG interconnectedness, not just individual goals. * Consider independent third-party involvement in materiality processes. #Grateful to my brilliant co-authors Dorota Dobija, Joanna Krasodomska, Chaoyuan She and Ewelina Zarzycka (the dream team!) for the collaboration and intellectual energy behind this work. Please feel free to contact me via e-mail (https://lnkd.in/g_5VrjRN) or LinkedIn Messenger if you would like a #PDF copy of the full paper. #sustainability #SDGs #materiality #stakeholderengagement #greenwashing #impact York University Schulich School of Business - York University Schulich Centre of Excellence in Responsible Business (COERB) CSEAR Alternative Accounting Research Network (AARN) Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Accounting for Sustainability (A4S) Accounting for Impact Accounting Forum Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada (CPA Canada) CPA Ontario EAA - European Accounting Association The Public Interest, Ethics, & Sustainability Section of the American Accounting Association The International Accounting Section (IAS) of the American Accounting Association
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