I was desperately looking for a “decent” ESG expert.
Definitions of “decent” can be several e.g. candidate under 3 million Indian Rs as annual CTC.
Several applied to my advertisement and my inbox was overflowing with applications. I thought of taking help from my Professor Friend. I had shortlisted few for in person interview to save everybody’s time.
Candidate One beamed. “I’ve disclosed Scope 3 across the value chain.”
“Lovely,” the Professor said, “but did you run an O-LCA to locate the real hotspots across the organization’s ecosystem—carbon, water, waste, biodiversity—so that materiality rests on evidence, not opinion?”
There was silence. I bet that candidate must have turned to ChatGPT asking “what the hell is O-LCA”
Candidate Two touted experience on stakeholder engagement.
“Excellent,” Professor nodded, “and did you anchor it to ESF—for instance, the World Bank’s ESS10 on stakeholder engagement—taking engagement a bit beyond the survey questionnaires?”
Candidate Three arrived with a confident smile.
“I’ve built advanced ESG dashboards and my clients can visualize KPIs in real time,” he said proudly.
On asking some deep diving questions, Professor shook his head. “A dashboard without diagnosis is like a stethoscope in the hands of a DJ—plenty of noise, no heartbeat!”
By lunch, he sighed: “Most are fluent in metrics but illiterate in meaning.”
Professor then sketched three overlapping circles labelled E, S, and G.
“ESG isn’t three lanes—it’s a roundabout. Every turn affects the others. That’s the ESG nexus.”.
We spoke more. Professor lighted his cigar. We discovered that there are some classic tools that train practitioners to see systemic linkages—or the very essence of the ESG nexus. The GenZ seems to be unaware or they just don’t care.
- EIA → SEA: From projects to policies.
EIA taught the license to operate; SEA evolved the view to policies, plans, and programs, revealing cumulative impacts and long-term trade-offs—exactly the kind of cross-impact thinking the nexus requires (e.g., climate gains vs. land, water, labour impacts in an energy transition). - LCA → O-LCA: From products to organizations.
LCA maps cradle-to-grave impacts; O-LCA scales that lens to the whole enterprise, grounding materiality beyond perceptions and showing where impacts actually sit (cotton fields? post-consumer waste?). - SIA: The social compass of transition.
Decarbonize a coal plant without SIA, and you may win on “E” while failing workers and communities on “S.” Nexus thinking prevents that myopia and brings in the idea of “just transition” Raises your conscious. - ESFs: The floor beneath the ESG castle.
Multilateral and Bilateral ESFs (World Bank, IFC, AIIB, BII) define non-negotiables—labour, biodiversity, resettlement, stakeholder engagement—and map to CSRD topics. This is the guardrail that keeps nexus promises credible and financeable.
Professor then underlined the progression on the board:
- EIA → License to Operate
- ESF → License to Finance
- ESG → License to Grow (responsibly)
I was amused with his daringly simple explanation.
He said “If you push recycled content (E), what happens to supplier labor (S) or traceability governance (G)? SEA surfaces those trade-offs; O-LCA tells you where they matter; SIA tells you who they touch; ESFs tell you what must not be violated. That’s the muscle memory we need.” Indeed, these tools help in nexus thinking that on practice becomes competitive strategy
He capped his pen and left me a message:
“Stop graduating reporting generalists. Start graduating nexus strategists. Teach the scaffolding that consists of fundamentals of EIA, SEA, LCA, O-LCA, SIA, and ESFs (and so on) —and then show how to understand and decipher ESG nexus for strategic actions.”
Just as the Professor was extinguishing his cigar and packing his notes, he paused.
“One more thing,” he said.
“ESG experts babble about carbon footprints and disclosure frameworks, but have they ever wrestled with ISO 14001? This standard is not glamorous, but it is the plumbing of sustainability. It creates the Environmental Management System (EMS) that forces organizations to:
- identify risks and impacts,
- set policies and objectives,
- implement controls and audits,
- and continually improve not must the organization but the supply chain
In fact, ISO 14001 is the closest cousin to IFC’s Performance Standard 1 — both require a structured process for assessing and managing environmental and social risks. One speaks in the language of international finance, the other in the language of auditors, but together they form the operational bridge between safeguards and strategy.”
He wrote on the whiteboard and underlined:
- IFC PS1 = the requirement
- ISO 14001 EMS = the operating system
“Without ISO 14001,” the Professor concluded, “ESG stays lofty in PowerPoints. With it, you can actually operationalize ESG across sites, supply chains, and subsidiaries.”
After he left, I thought of drafting curriculum for the course ESG 100 and in the bracket I scribbled (The Missing Curriculum)
Course Premise : This is not ESG 101, that is generally a crash course in acronyms and reporting templates. This is ESG 100 — the grounding every practitioner must master to move from metrics to meaning, from compliance clerks to nexus strategists.
Module 1: Seeing Impacts, Not Just Indicators
– Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA): Learn to predict and mitigate project-level impacts.
– Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA): Step up to policies, plans, and programs; understand cumulative impacts and nexus trade-offs (e.g., shifting from coal to renewables involves land, water, labour, and biodiversity).
– Learning outcome: Students see how isolated “E” metrics fit within broader social and governance trade-offs.
Module 2: Climate Change : Change the Lens
– Integrating Climate Risk Assessment in EIA
– Climate change is not just one among many ESG concerns—it is the amplifier of all others. Its effects ripple across water stress, food systems, migration, public health, and economic resilience. The interconnectedness of ESG topics becomes clearer when we place climate change at the center: energy links to emissions; supply chains link to climate vulnerability; biodiversity links to carbon sinks. This ivery definition of a nexus is to be understood.
Module 3: Following the Lifecycle Trail
– Life Cycle Assessment (LCA): Cradle-to-grave impact analysis of products.
– Organizational Life Cycle Assessment (O-LCA): Expand the scope to the whole enterprise; ground materiality in evidence, not perception.
– Case example: Discovering that water risk lies upstream in cotton farming, not in factory operations.
– Learning outcome: Ability to link Scope 3 disclosures to actual hotspots – just an example
Module 4: The Social Compass
– Social Impact Assessment (SIA): Systematically identify who gains and who loses in transitions.
– Focus: Just transition strategies, retraining, community investments.
– Learning outcome: Grasp that ESG is not only about climate wins but also about preventing social injustices.
Module 5: Safeguards as the Floor
– Environmental and Social Frameworks (ESFs): Study the 10 ESS of the World Bank, IFC and ADB Performance Standards, ESFs of AIIB, BII etc. to understand E&S policies and operations in equity and debt funds
– Mapping: How ESS align with CSRD topics (e.g., ESS2 with workforce, ESS6 with biodiversity, ESS10 with governance).
– Learning outcome: Understand the “non-negotiables” financiers demand — or the license to finance.
Module 6: Operationalizing ESG
– ISO 14001 Environmental Management System (EMS): Practical system for embedding continuous improvement in organizations.
– Link: Align with IFC Performance Standard 1.
– Learning outcome: Learn how to move from ESG commitments on paper to management routines in practice.
Module 7: Connecting the ESG Nexus
– Integration Exercise: Students map how an environmental action (say, recycled plastic packaging) ripples across social and governance domains.
– Framework: EIA = License to Operate, ESF = License to Finance, ESG = License to Grow.
– Learning outcome: Ability to think in nexus terms — connecting safeguards, strategy, and value creation.
Module 8: Case Studies and Applications (These will be in addition to case studies that will be included in the Modules)
– Learning outcome: Recognize that these tools are springboards for competitive advantage.
Such modules should not be conducted in one go! They have to be brewed over say 12 weeks – 2 hour live session a week and support of self learning platform with a capstone.
Here we are not talking about a 36 lecture full EIA course but introduce the principles and methodologies that help understand the nexus. Learning how to create network diagrams showing direct, indirect, short and long term (the impact taxonomy) is good enough. You may then “flow” this thinking to LCA to escalate to O-LCA. The same will be true for other Modules I suggested.
So I am not suggesting stacked full academic courses. It’s relevant and clever concoction is what I am referring to. Participants may of course deep dive separately if they get excited and are eager to learn more
I knew Professor will rewrite my draft of course ESG 100 when we meet in the coffee shop. Some people always disagree.
The sobering reality is that most so-called ESG training programs today remain superficial. They emphasize disclosure frameworks, reporting templates, or the mechanics of rating systems, while neglecting the deeper foundations of assessment, safeguards, and management systems. Participants leave with certificates, not competencies. They can quote acronyms but cannot connect the ESG nexus — the interdependence between environment, social justice, and governance structures. Unless training evolves to include disciplines such as EIA, SEA, LCA, O-LCA, SIA, ESFs, and ISO 14001, we risk creating a generation of “ESG clerks” instead of “ESG strategists.” The true test of an ESG professional is not how many dashboards they can populate, but whether they can translate numbers into narratives of change, risk, and opportunity. This is the challenge ESG 100 is designed to meet.
Next day Professor reviewed my draft and chuckled “Dr Modak, good start but designing ESG 100 is the easy part. But tell me—who will teach such a course? Most current trainers are experts in (recycled) PowerPoint decks and ESG reporting checklists. To run ESG 100, you need faculty who have survived an EIA hearing, wrestled with an ISO 14001 audit, negotiated a resettlement plan, or convinced financiers on ESF compliance. Without such lived experience, we risk courses that are heavy on slides but light on scars—the kind of scars that etch lessons deep into a student’s mind. The real scarcity is not students—it is teachers who can turn this missing curriculum for ESG into effective practice.”
I kept shut.
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