ESG not about wokeness but a business imperative: Punit Renjen

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Punit Renjen, deputy chairperson-supervisory board, SAP SE.
Speaking at a B20 panel on Saturday, Renjen said businesses need to address the climate question as that is what their employees increasingly want; this is what underpinned Deloitte’s work on ESG while he was heading it. “If I want to hire the very best individuals and I want to retain them, I must have a critical response to that question,” he said.

Speaking at the same event, Bernard Looney, CEO of BP, said ESG serves both moral and business good.

“There is no choice to be made,” he said, but complexity of standards makes it hard to implement and may have negative unintended consequences.

However, the International Sustainability Standards Board’s (ISSB) standards are too complex, hurt business, and should not be accepted, Renjen said. A building block approach is needed instead.

Those who have endorsed the ISSB’s “alphabet soup” of standards will “sunset their organisations”, he said.

At the same time, the idea that ESG is “woke” needs to be tackled by businesses by example he said. “We're trying to come up with a narrative to counter this false, uninformed narrative that some in the United States are trying to push that this is no business for business to be in, that business should just focus on the bottom line,” he added.

According to ITC chairman and MD Sanjiv Puri, simplicity and clear definitions are key.

Further, regulators should have the capacity to dynamically review and update standards. “It needs to be a framework that’s adaptable,” he said.