“ESG is dying” may be something you’ve heard, read or even said. In some boardrooms, strategy meetings and investor decks, the three-letter sustainability rallying cry is morphing into a new watchword: resilience.
But here’s the question:
Is resilience just the natural evolution of ESG — more closely resonating with financial, operational and commercial outcomes? Or is the rising focus on resilience a rejection of (or move away from) the ethical foundations of ESG?
How we got here: From CSR to ESG to poly-crisis … to resilience?
Placing resilience in its historical context is a helpful starting point:
Pre-1990s – Community Focus: Early Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) efforts emphasized “giving back” through community engagement and philanthropy.
1990s – Environmental Impact: Growing awareness of global environmental issues shifted the focus toward measuring and managing a company’s impact on the environment.
2000s – Purpose and Branding: The rise of purpose-driven companies saw social and environmental missions ingrained into core business models. The term “ESG” first gained widespread use in 2004, and more corporations began developing ESG strategies. But as corporate responsibility became a marketing message, we also saw the emerging of superficial “greenwashing.”
2010s – Reporting and Financialisation: Stakeholder demands for more meaningful accountability drove an explosion in ESG reporting, the development of ESG disclosure frameworks, and the financialisation of sustainability metrics that allowed ESG to be integrated into conventional financial analysis.
2018 to present – Climate Emergency and “Poly-crisis”: The declaration of a global climate emergency spurred widespread Net Zero commitments and transition planning. That collective momentum was complicated by a poly-crisis that started with the COVID-19 pandemic and expanded to include the war in Ukraine, ongoing supply chain disruptions and global trade tensions.
Present – Move Toward Resilience: Relentless shocks drove businesses to move toward resilience — focusing on a company’s ability to survive, adapt, recover and thrive amidst a persistent state of poly-crisis. Much of that ability was embedded within, and tracked by, the responsible business metrics and initiatives of its ESG strategy. For many, resilience is the natural outcome of that focus on ‘doing well by doing good’ that encompasses business structure, strategy, technological agility and investments that enhance traditional risk management to ensure both immediate and long-term viability.
Challenge your thinking:
Have you heard and seen a rising focus on resilience? And — if so — is it changing your business strategy — or just changing the language you use to talk about it? Share your thoughts.
Has ESG become too hot to handle?
In some quarters, the move to resilience is no quiet revolution — it’s partly a response to significant backlash against ESG. Proponents argue that ESG provided a sound framework, fostering objective accountability through increased reporting and transparency that helped to advance sustainability. However, ESG critics and deniers have grown progressively louder in the past few years.
For some, “ESG” became a dirty word. Critics say ESG is fundamentally misaligned with core business and shareholder objectives. Moreover, they point to downsides that outweighed good intent — from burdensome reporting to rampant greenwashing and investments with vague value propositions and/or overly long time horizons that were hard to justify financially. The recent geopolitical environment is also playing a big role, led by President Trump targeting the elimination of climate initiatives, which he has referred to broadly as a “scam.”
The pushback put pressure on C-suites, driving major financial players like BlackRock and JPMorgan to pull back from specific climate alliances (though continuing, albeit more quietly, to assert commitments to climate goals).
In this febrile atmosphere, a rebranding of ESG as resilience may prove more palatable and acceptable to certain stakeholders.
Is resilience a better way to connect sustainability with broader business goals?
Advocates for the resilience paradigm argue it offers a more intuitive connection to traditional core business goals and KPIs, making it easier to justify initiatives to boards, investors and CFOs who all demand clear ROI. Moreover, where ESG often focused on longer-term and/or less-quantifiable benefits, resilience frequently speaks directly to navigating the most pressing challenges and ongoing volatility in the business environment.
This more immediate focus shifts the narrative from “preparing for the uncertainties of the next five to 10 years” to “adapting in real time to the continuous stream of unexpected shifts and poly-crises in the coming months.” We’ve seen new terms like “adaptation finance” and “transition finance” emerge to describe this more pragmatic approach.
Challenge your thinking:
Does resilience more intuitively align sustainability concerns with core business outcomes? Or is it still challenging for you to demonstrate the connection?
Is ESG a covert framework for achieving resilience?
If you dig into how organisations operationalize resilience, there are significant overlaps and roots in established ESG strategies and practices. Some even describe resilience by reframing the outputs from ESG initiatives in terms of cost savings, risk mitigation, growth contribution and human capital investment.
Indeed, a traditional ESG programme, executed effectively, will drive resilience at three levels:
Economic resilience: Conventional ESG practices focus on improving efficiency, cutting waste and avoiding penalties — all of which directly contribute to the bottom line and improve economic resilience.
Operational resilience: Robust ESG programmes typically include continuous improvement initiatives that streamline processes, reduce resource usage, improve supply chain relationships and strengthen governance. In these cases, ESG improves operational resilience.
Commercial resilience: Effective ESG programmes bring sustainability commitments and outcomes to life, bolster brand reputation, improve stakeholder relationships, attract and retain talent. ESG and sustainability criteria (whether directly named as such or not) can be up to 30% of scoring in bids and tenders. Thus, ESG’s ability to drive new revenue — winning clients and developing new products or services — directly contributes to the top line, enhancing commercial resilience.
Many companies have begun to dial back the language of ESG from their strategy and reporting, or even vocally reject ESG. Yet, under the hood, their investments and strategies have remained largely the same. Indeed, the KPMG 2024 CEO Outlook found that most CEOs remain committed to climate strategies despite altering the narrative. Furthermore, investments in areas like the energy transition remain substantial (hitting $2 trillion globally last year, according to Bloomberg) — suggesting ESG actions continue under different labels.
Challenge your thinking:
Is resilience just a reframing of ESG — or something entirely different? Share your thoughts.
Does it matter — if ESG is simply re-badged as resilience?
Tracking the historical path — from CSR to ESG to resilience — could be viewed as a progressive effort to put ethical, humanitarian goals into conventional business language. We’ve evolved from the general idea of “giving back” to communities, to defining broader ESG responsibilities and establishing objective metrics for reporting on those responsibilities, to now attempting to quantify how these initiatives directly impact business KPIs in a more tangible and often shorter-term way.
Proponents of the resilience paradigm argue this evolution ultimately benefits ethical and humanitarian goals. By providing a clearer business case — linking social and environmental actions to economic, operational and commercial resilience — leaders will be in a stronger position to prioritise and justify business investments that also have positive societal outcomes. This perspective holds that getting things done, regardless of the label, represents progress.
But there’s a valid concern that forcing ESG to fit into a more explicitly capitalistic framework will water down efforts essential for tackling large-scale, collective risks. This perspective holds that not all business actions can be accountable to the almighty ROI calculation — and some investments have generational, rather than quarterly, time horizons.
Challenge your thinking:
Is there a need for (and will the business climate tolerate) ethical or humanitarian business strategies that don’t directly ladder up to conventional business goals?
Join the live debate — Is Resilience the New ESG?
Resilience has taken the spotlight in boardrooms as organisations prioritise adaptation and readiness for persistent global shocks. But is resilience just ESG in a business suit — or a fundamental change in priorities?
Our expert panel will explore whether resilience is reframing sustainability, replacing it, or revealing what ESG was missing all along.
