Diploma in Sustainability and ESG

In this lecture, I introduce various ESG reporting frameworks such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the International Sustainability Standard Board (ISSB) framework, etc. It is important that students pay attention and know these key frameworks.

The focus is to enable students to understand the most popular ESG frameworks that are used widely by companies to report their ESG performance to stakeholders. Please pay attention and know these frameworks.

I have attached a pdf document that contains GRI standards for your further learning. So, endeavour to have a look at it.

Unilever is a great business case of how a business can go beyond verbal pronoucement of ESG to doing what it said it was committed to! We have discussed the good ESG compliant and reporting practices that the company has adopted in recent years.

This integration of sustainability as part of corporate strategy has helped Unilever to become a more stable company that has built good reputation with the publics and customer, managed risk better, and position itself as a long term value creator for both investors and all stakeholders.

I have attached a copy of Unilever sustainability report for your reading. Please spend some time to read it and understand the key components and issues covered by a good sustainability report.

The UN sustainable Development Goals are the foundations that gave birth to ALL other sustainability and ESG frameworks and initiatives today! In this lecture, we have a look at them and establish their connection or relationship with other ESG standards.

I have provided a link to the details UN SDGs where you can visit to learn more about the 17 UN-SDGs. Please endeavour to spare some time to go learn them.

This lecture continues with the discussion of the ESG frameworks like the SASB and TCFD. I have provided addition document which contains the TCFD framework as attachment for your further studies.

This lectures discuss the key harmonized ESG framework that is now being adopted globally in Europe, Africa, and Middle East, and Asia. It is called the IFRS Sustainability standards.

I have attached a brief document about these standards for your further learning, so do spend some time to learn them further.

We introduced environmental sustainability in this lecture and explained why it is important for companies to manage the risks and opportunities arising from environmental issues properly.

We discussed key issues that affect a company's operations that relate to the environmental pillar of ESG and sustainability such as carbon emission, resource and water use, pollution, etc.

One of the biggest issues under environmental sustainability is climate risks and opportunities. So we devoted this lecture to delve into it.

In this lecture, we discussed the three types of climate risk that most organizations are exposed to. These risks affect all organizations, however, their levels of exposure might differ depending on their industries.

We have discussed about four esg reporting framework earlier but not all are suitable for reporting and disclosing climate risks and opportunities. So, we focus on the appropriate one here that could be used to do the job.

Organizations need to measure the impacts of their business activities and operations on the environment and disclose them objectively to stakeholders and investors. Hence, they require tools to do so. We examined these tools and methods used for this purpose in this lecture.

We introduced the GreenHouse Gas (GHG) protocol in this lecture as one of the popular tools used to measure amount of carbon that an organization emits to the environment.

In this lecture, students will learn about the Life Cycle Assessment method for measuring the footprint of an organization on the environment.

The buzz words in sustainability and ESG now are net zero and carbon neutrality as these dominate discussion on corporate board rooms and meetings. Students are exposed to the evolution and origin of these collaquia and their actual meanings.

Tesco has presented itself as a nice case of a large organization that is committed to managing climate risk as the company is evolving its business operations and supply chains to minimize and mitigate climate risk. Students are introduce to this live business case and the impacts of such proactive climate risk managemt on the company's future.

In this lecture, we introduce social performance as a pillar of ESG and discussed the key issues that an organization should consider seriously if they wanted to improve their social performance.

Labour as a factor of production is very essential component of social pillar of ESG. So, we discuss how an organization can adopt best labour relations practices such as Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) to improve its human capital management in this lecture.

In this lecture, we explore the importance of what happens in an organization supply chains to the social performance of a business and propose strategies that an organization can adopt to manage its supply chain risks effectively and boost its social performance.

The sustainability and ESG strategy of every organization must be underpined by risk and opportunities. Hence, we have set out this lecture to highlight and discuss the risks and opportunities that reside in the social pillar of sustainability.

We have introduce some of the metrics that an organization committed to ESg must set goals and targets around and collect and process data on them in order to measure their social performance. We have also connected these metrics to the sustainability reporting framework and explained how metrics can be situated within the popular framework.

In this lecture, we connected this section to section two where we studied sustainability reporting frameworks and standards and recommended the best framework suitable for adoption for the purpose of reporting an organization's social performance.

This lectures explore the approaches that companies can adopt to improve their social performances. We consider ways like stakeholder engagement, community investment, etc.

In this lecture, we continue to explore the ways that business organizations can adopt to  improve their social performance and mitigate their ESG risks while seizing available opportunities within the social pillar.

Finally, this lecture explores the importance of subjecting a company's ESG data and data collection processes as well as the sustainability information to a rigorous audit by external independent sustainability auditor. We also conclude by sharing insights from the Unilever Plc best social performance initiatives.

This lecture will help you to understand the meaning of good corporate governance in the context of sustainability and ESG. You will also learn about the importance governance factor to long term value creation of a company.

This lecture will enable students to have a full grasp of the issues in governance that ESG and sustainability focus on. These issues represent risks to the organization and any organization that wants to achieve a better performance in this pillar of ESG must consider them carefully.

In this lecture, you will learn about the baseline requirements for the governance roles and structures that ESG reporting standards require organization that are committed to sustainability to maintain in running the business.

Learners will understand the characteristics of responsible leadership. This lecture will help them to be able to assess the leadership system and attributes in an organization and be able to classify it as eithical and responsible or unethical categories.

Students will learn about the very important ingredients that must be present in a company's governance struture for it to meet the standards for good governance. These essentials are criteria that sustainability experts adopt in auditing the governance pillar of sustainability.

In this lecture we dived into another essential of good governance- board independence and diversity and examined its importance to the functioning of a governance system in a company.

In this lecture, students will learn another essential ingredient of good governance, which is anti-bribery and compliance with the law. They will learn the litmus test for good anti-bribery and compliance processes.

This lectures opens students up to yet another essential of good governance- executive pay. Students will learn the best practices required  by ESG standards for setting a fair and performance driven executive pay that can drive long term value creation to all stakeholders in a company.

This lecture introduces students to the various KPIs that sustainability reporting frameworks recommend for organizations to maintain and adopt to measure how well or badly the organization is performing within the governance pillar.

In this lecture, students will learn the appropriate sustainability and ESG reporting standards that an organization can adopt to report its performance on the governance pillar to stakeholders. Students will also learn how an organization can make its governance performance disclosures robust and consistent by combining multiple ESG reporting framework.

This lecture presents a good business case of good corporate governance that has integrated ESG and sustainability risk and opportunities into the governance structures of the case company-NESTLE Plc. This will help students to appreciate great governance performers and possibly immitate their success in integrating sustainability at their companies.

I have attached a copy of the sustainability and ESG report prepared by Nestle in this section for your download. Please take time and have a look at it to learn how they made disclosures of governance risk and opportunities as well as the companies approach for managing these.

In this lecture, students will learn about governance failure and how it could lead to total collapse of a company, no matter how large its size is. Students understanding of the importance of essentials of good governance would be reinforced by pointing how lack of these essentials can lead to corporate catastrophe!

Thuis lecture presents a summary of everything covered here in the governance pillar of ESG and gives you opportunity to reflect on some important aspects of the material you have learned here.

This lectures will help students to understand what ESG reporting means and the importance of preparing ESG report.

In this lecture, students will learn and understand the structure of ESG report and various sections that make up this report.

This lecture presents the content of the first part of ESG report which is an executive summary.

In this lecture, we delved into the second compoent of the ESG report which explains how ESG risk and opportunities in an organization are being managed and those responsible for managing them.

In this lecture, students will learn the information content relating to environmental pillar of ESG that should be presented in the ESG report.

In this lecture, students will learn how to present and disclose ESG issues that fall under the purview of social performance in the ESG report.

In this lecture, students will learn the governance issues of ESG that need to be presented and disclosed in this section of the ESG report and also learn from a best in performance business case- KraftHeinz ESG report.

This lectures delves into the metrics and KPIs that ESG frameworks requires companies that declare commitment to ESG and sustainability to disclose in their sustainability report.

In this lecture, student will learn about materiality and how to apply materiality concept to determine the esg risk and opportunity that need to be disclosed and reported in the ESG report and what should not be disclosed.

In this lecture, students will learn about the key contents that will be presented in the appendix section of an ESG report.

In this lecture, students will understand the meaning of ESG audit and why it is important to subject a prepared ESG report to a third party audit. They will also learn the challenges that they should anticipate when preparing ESG report.