Esg Consultant

By Author: Agile Advisor
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Accelerating ESG for a mutual and economical advantage

The evidence is mounting that companies' performance in terms of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors contributes to business success, and the rate at which those factors become material to any business is increasing over time.

However, current economic headwinds and the ongoing stress of Covid 19 may necessitate a reduction in ambitious sustainability spending (everywhere) for the rest of the year. Companies and a wide range of stakeholders, most notably investors, are already on board in the search for strategic sustainability integration and reporting, and ESG consultants are proving to be the new platform or lingua franca within which this dialogue and engagement are taking place successfully in the long run.

ESG Strategy and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) / Sustainability are terms that are used interchangeably so they are not the same thing. There is a distinction to be made between disclosing and benchmarking data.

Sustainability is a catch-all term that refers to a company's efforts to "do ...
... better" by stakeholders and CSR has also matured to the point where many companies have an executive at the management level, collect and report on their performance, and in some cases have an entire department devoted to Sustainability in the long run.

While ESG reporting goes a step further by balancing the same principles of CSR and Sustainability with an emphasis on investor needs, good governance, and highlighting a set of criteria aimed at advantage or collection savings to estimate a business's green, social, and control presentation.

As part of its strategy to promote sustainability in the financial markets, the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX) issued new ESG disclosure guidelines for listed companies in July 2019 which has a set of 31 key performance indicators that promote economic growth and encourage businesses to engage in socially responsible practices. The guidelines also improve governance by putting sustainability standards into practice and incorporating them into the strategies of publicly traded companies. The Sustainability Group, an initiative of the industry body World Federation of Exchanges, inspired the ESG Disclosure Guidance for companies in long run.

The Dubai Financial Market PJSC will launch a new index in April 2020 that measures listed companies' commitment to implementing ESG policies. It will be reconstituted once a year, in November, and will automatically include the top 20 stocks as well as standard indicators to assess companies' adherence to ESG principles across the operation.

In June 2020, the Bahrain Stock Exchange released Exchange in Focus: Bahrain ESG Reporting Guidelines. This guidance encourages listed companies to disclose a set of 32 ESG metrics and indicators by the recommendations of the UN Sustainable Global Reporting Initiative's 54 members and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The guideline explains the key regional and international drivers for ESG reporting adoption, the value of ESG reporting, how to report on ESG, and how Bahrain's Stock Exchange promotes sustainability as well.

As these GGC ESG Indexes mature, so will the role of ESG in ensuring the region's transformation's long-term viability for business. Government initiatives in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) can provide critical top-down support for ESG disclosure adoption, allowing the GCC business ecosystem to adapt and transform toward a more sustainable future. Government initiatives can also aid in the preparation of the ground for businesses, however, challenges remain throughout the GCC regarding how to implement full-scale ESG integration, one that goes beyond outdated CSR initiatives and generic sustainability reporting as success indicators across all business functions.

Agile Advisors launched its operations in 2016 and has since rapidly grown globally. We have offices in UAE, Bahrain and India. Our team brings in a plethora of expertise in sustainability cutting across different sectors.