The ESG Chameleons

A chameleon is defined as “a person who often changes his or her beliefs or behavior in order to please others or to succeed.” (Mirriam Webster)

With the hype of needing to be more environmentally and socially conscious, the implementation of ESG and/or CSR policies that indicate an organisations commitment to the environmental and social has been blooming.

The idea that organisations want to have these policies in place is great at face value and has a lot of consumers and individuals excited about the strong care to assist in eradicating environmental and social degradation.

However, when a company gets called out when an environmental or social disaster takes place, the reality of just how rooted ESG policies are within an organisation comes to light.

A recent example is the Rio Tinto disaster. Rio Tinto was known for its continuous statements about responsible mining and its awareness off aboriginal land. When it came time to decide, when mining for iron ore, whether or not to blow-up a 46 000 year old Indigenous site in Western-Australia, even though alternatives where available, Rio Tinto chose to blow it up instead. This decision inevitably blew-up in their faces, as their apparent constant commitment to responsible mining and indigenous land, was just lip-service. The company’s ESG reputation was questioned immediately. This is an ESG Chameleon, and Rio Tinto is not the only one.

Hopefully, what this has taught us is that ESG has fallen within the greenwashing scandal and making sure that ESG policies stand-up to what they are meant for is of the utmost importance.

Moore Global will ensure that your ESG policies and framework put in place are held to scrutiny and that at no time will your entity be seen as an ESG Chameleon.