Library | ESG issues
Oversight, Assurance & Audit
Effective oversight, assurance, and audit are essential for organisations to manage risks and ensure the integrity of both financial and sustainability reporting. Boards and senior executives are responsible for overseeing risk management processes, obtaining assurance that principal risks are identified, managed, and monitored, and ensuring the effectiveness of internal controls. Audits, whether financial or sustainability-focused, involve independent evaluations of an organisation’s reports and controls to provide stakeholders with confidence in the accuracy and reliability of disclosed information.
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Ratings insights: Understanding the global green bond index
Sustainable Fitch maps its framework and entity-level ratings to the Bloomberg MSCI Global Green Bond Index, covering 88% of index bonds. While index constituents show stronger framework quality and ICMA alignment than the broader market, many high-quality and transition-relevant bonds sit outside the benchmark due to financial eligibility constraints.
Ethical & impactful usage of AI
This report by Do Harvey outlines an ethical framework for AI usage, highlighting environmental impacts, security risks, and bias concerns. It advocates for transparent, client-opt-in adoption underpinned by human oversight, and summarises five modes of AI use to guide teams in making values-aligned, informed decisions.
Responsible AI in practice: 2025 global insights from the AI Company Data initiative
This report analyses publicly disclosed data from 2,972 companies across 11 sectors, revealing a significant gap between AI adoption and governance maturity. Only 13 per cent align their strategy with a formal framework, and few demonstrate adequate worker protections, ethical impact assessments, or training data oversight.
Optional shareholder voting
This paper examines optional shareholder voting by institutional managers (IMs) using newly available SEC data on say-on-pay votes. Only 44% of IMs vote, yet their aggregate voting footprint is twice that of mutual funds. IMs use voting as a monitoring tool, with larger positions associated with greater opposition to management.
Frontier AI auditing: Toward rigorous third-party assessment of safety and security practices at leading AI companies
This report proposes a rigorous framework for third-party auditing of frontier AI systems to verify safety and security claims. Addressing the opacity of current self-assessments, it advocates for structured AI Assurance Levels, deep access to non-public information, and continuous monitoring to enable confident deployment and standardisation across the industry.
Legal opinion: Director’s duties and nature-related risks in the Philippines
CCLI’s legal opinion finds Philippine company directors must consider nature-related and biodiversity risks within their fiduciary duties. The report outlines potential legal, disclosure and governance consequences for failing to manage these risks, while also highlighting directors’ obligations to assess nature-related opportunities supporting long-term corporate resilience.
Impact statement framework: Valuing, accounting and reporting societal impact
Framework for impact statements, valuing organisations’ societal effects across natural, human and social capital using eQALY. It outlines scope, data, modelling, reporting, governance and case studies to support comparable, decision-useful impact valuation.
Free to be exploited: The abuse of platform-based food delivery riders in Saudi Arabia and the UAE
Report finds migrant delivery riders in Saudi Arabia and UAE face systemic exploitation via third-party logistics, including coercive employment, wage abuses, unsafe conditions, and restricted mobility. Weak enforcement and outsourcing obscure accountability. Recommends stronger regulation, corporate oversight, and international labour standards.
ASEAN SDG Bond Toolkit
Provides practical guidance for issuing SDG bonds in ASEAN, outlining principles, processes, and frameworks aligned with green, social and sustainability bond standards. It explains SDG mapping, eligibility criteria, reporting practices, and market context to support issuers in mobilising capital for sustainable development.
Financial Reporting Council (FRC)
Financial Reporting Council (FRC) is UK’s independent regulator for corporate governance, audit, accounting and actuarial professions. It sets standards such as Corporate Governance and Stewardship Codes, supervises audit quality, and enforces compliance. FRC promotes transparency, integrity and investor confidence in financial reporting, supporting effective capital markets and responsible business practices.
GRI Standards
The GRI Standards are globally recognised sustainability reporting guidelines enabling organisations to disclose economic, environmental and social impacts in a consistent and comparable way. They support transparency, accountability and informed decision-making by helping organisations identify, measure and communicate material ESG impacts and contributions to sustainable development.
Implications of the International Court of Justice’s Advisory Opinion on Climate Change for directors’ duties in relation to climate-related risks
Examines how the ICJ’s climate advisory opinion may elevate climate-related risks and regulatory pressures, increasing directors’ duty of care. Highlights litigation, disclosure, and transition risks, particularly for emissions-intensive sectors, and emphasises informed decision-making and accurate reporting to mitigate liability.
Nature markets: Overarching principles and framework: Specification version 2
Sets out overarching principles and framework for high-integrity UK nature markets, covering credit generation, trading and storage. Emphasises transparency, additionality, governance, verification and registries to ensure credible environmental outcomes, prevent greenwashing, and support investment in nature recovery.
Good practices for handling whistleblower disclosures
ASIC report outlines good practices for whistleblower programmes, based on a review of selected firms. It highlights governance, culture, training, monitoring, and use of disclosures to improve performance, alongside executive accountability and board oversight to ensure compliance with Corporations Act requirements.
Monitoring internal whistleblowing systems: A framework for collecting data and reporting on performance and impact
Transparency International sets out a framework for monitoring internal whistleblowing systems, covering data collection, reporting, confidentiality, stakeholder accountability, performance indicators, retaliation complaints, trust and awareness measures, and resource tracking to help organisations assess effectiveness and improve protections and governance.
Governing for net zero: The board's role in organisational transition planning
This report guides Australian boards on integrating net zero transition planning into strategy, governance, disclosure and stakeholder engagement. It outlines directors’ legal duties, mandatory climate reporting requirements, and practical oversight questions to help organisations manage climate-related risks, opportunities and implementation.
