ESG Frameworks, Standards and Disclosure

The terms

• Double Materiality

  Double materiality asks two questions about a sustainability topic: does the company affect people or the environment in a significant way, and does the topic significantly affect the company’s own finances?

  Domain: Sustainability and ESG

• ESG Data Quality

  ESG data quality describes how complete, accurate, consistent, comparable and verifiable a company’s environmental, social and governance data is, and so how far investors, regulators and managers can rely on it.

  Domain: Sustainability and ESG

• Financial Materiality

  Financial materiality is the test of whether a sustainability matter could reasonably affect a company’s cash flows, access to finance or value, and therefore whether investors would want to know about it.

  Domain: Sustainability and ESG

• Greenhushing

  Greenhushing is when a company deliberately plays down or keeps quiet about its climate targets and progress, usually to avoid scrutiny, criticism or legal risk, even though it has real plans in place.

  Domain: Sustainability and ESG

• Greenwashing

  Greenwashing is making environmental or sustainability claims about a company, product or fund that are misleading, exaggerated or unsupported, so that it looks greener than it is.

  Domain: Sustainability and ESG

• Materiality Assessment

  A materiality assessment is the process a company uses to identify, rank and approve the sustainability topics that matter most, either to its stakeholders, to its finances, or to both, as the basis for reporting.

  Domain: Sustainability and ESG

• Social Washing

  Social washing is when a company overstates or misrepresents its record on social matters, such as diversity, fair pay, workers’ rights or community benefit, to look more responsible than the evidence supports.

  Domain: Sustainability and ESG

• Sustainability Governance

  Sustainability governance is the set of structures, roles and decision rights through which a board and management oversee sustainability risks, targets and reporting, and are held accountable for them.

  Domain: Sustainability and ESG

• Sustainability Reporting

  Sustainability reporting is the practice of disclosing an organisation’s environmental, social and governance performance, risks and impacts to stakeholders, increasingly following common standards and subject to assurance.

  Domain: Sustainability and ESG

• Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

  The SDGs are seventeen goals adopted by all UN member states in 2015, setting shared targets to 2030 on poverty, health, equality, climate and other global problems, which companies and governments use as a common reference.

  Domain: Sustainability and ESG