Resource Center

With growing scrutiny from stakeholders—international regulators and regional governments, NGOs, the general public, investors, and financial institutions—companies accused of human rights violations and environmental damage in their supply chains face substantial risks.

The invasion of Ukraine highlights the fragility of the global food system. The destruction caused by the war and subsequent trade restrictions on Russia, endangers a significant percentage of the global food supply coming from two of world’s leading agricultural commodity exporters, consequently prompting food prices to surpass the 30-year high.

Financial institutions funding the supply chains affected by biodiversity loss stand to lose right alongside farmers, producers and retailers—and so, in turn, do investors. ESG stewardship continues to be a powerful investor instrument to mitigate risks on a changing planet. With growing expectations of double materiality, it is an opportunity for investors to have a greater societal impact and support the transition towards a nature-positive economy.

All companies are affected by material ESG issues. Poor management of these issues can negatively impact a company’s operations, employee retention, community relations, and ultimately its share price. Learn which ESG issues cut across industries and how companies can address the most impactful MEIs affecting them.

We discuss setting up your corporate ESG program for success and avoiding early ESG obstacles in this interview with Sustainalytics Corporate Solutions Director, Shilpi Singh. You’ll discover the importance of four ESG focus areas: leadership buy-in, planning and resourcing, ESG strategy, and reporting and communication.

Discover the five industries facing the highest ESG risk, the issues impacting the risk profiles of companies in those industries, and how all companies can best manage these issues.

In this infographic, we outline essential action-oriented steps to get you started on your ESG journey, including obtaining high-level executive buy-in, resourcing your efforts, strategic planning, and reporting the results of your program.

This report sheds light on the growing effects of water scarcity on companies and countries. To address these challenges, investors can use water reporting metrics to identify companies and countries with severe water risk. We further relate water metrics to firm and country characteristics and highlight substantial cross-sectional differences.

Discover some of the obstacles ESG leaders face in the early stages of their journey toward sustainability — and what you can about them—in this checklist. Is your company dealing with limited human resources, overwhelming ESG information, inconsistent communication with stakeholders, understanding the competitive landscape, or funding your ESG program?

In this FAQ, we’ve answered several key questions to help companies like yours understand what ESG means for you in practice.

This blog post explains what is ESG, including basic ESG concepts, ESG scores and ratings, and why companies of all sizes need ESG risk management.

Businesses are looking closer look at their supply chains than ever. View our checklist to learn essential ESG action steps to put your company’s supply chain on the path to sustainability.

This ebook outlines the key steps for every company starting out with ESG, including getting buy-in, understanding your situation, developing a strategy, and more.

This infographic shows the impacts of strong or weak supply chain practices and breaks down six crucial factors for identifying strong and weak sustainability traits in any organization.

In this infographic discover why companies are focusing on how biodiversity loss impacts their businesses and four ways they can address those risks.

To address supply chain risk, business leaders must consider an increasingly broad range of factors in procurement, including environmental, social and governance (ESG) impacts. Investors, customers, and regulators are applying substantial pressure on companies to reduce risks like labor disruptions, workforce health and safety incidents, human rights issues, and shortages of natural resources.

In 68% of our engagements, product governance is a significant material ESG issue, but it is our experience that most companies underestimate the materiality of this risk to investors. For some industries, product governance represents on average more than 20% of ESG risk exposure, as identified within our ESG Risk Rating framework.

Banks will play a key role in the green transition and those that commit to sustainable banking may gain an advantage over competitors, among other benefits. Indeed, banks are uniquely positioned to participate in and benefit from the transition to a green economy.

Reactions to the COP26 Conference and the resulting Glasgow Climate Pact have predictably run the gamut from claims of greenwashing to the celebration of progress in the fight against climate change. Ultimately, any judgement on COP26 may be premature, as the success of the conference will best be measured in time by the extent to which commitments made are put into motion. While we wait to see the concrete actions that materialize, the past two weeks have underscored the importance of several themes that will garner increasing attention and should be considered by sustainable investors.

This infographic describes five key innovations in sustainable finance, including green deposits, sustainable deposits, green trade loans, green guarantees and letters of credit, sustainable supply chain financing, and offerings for borrowers in industries not traditionally considered green.