Library | ESG issues
Systems Thinking
Systems thinking is a holistic approach to problem-solving that focuses on how different parts of a system interact and influence each other over time. It helps leaders see beyond individual components like departments, markets, or financial statements to understand the broader dynamics, feedback loops, and long-term impacts of decisions. This perspective improves risk management, strategic planning, and operational efficiency by recognising interconnected relationships rather than isolated events.
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The SDG partnership guidebook: A practical guide to building high-impact multi-stakeholder partnerships for the Sustainable Development Goals
This guidebook provides a practical framework for building high-impact multi-stakeholder partnerships for the SDGs. It details the partnering lifecycle, essential building blocks like trust and governance, and strategies for business engagement and system transformation. The resource helps organisations become fit for partnering to maximise collaborative value and impact.
Facing backlash and derailment risks: Building capacities for navigating transformations to sustainability and justice in turbulent times
This research article identifies three backlash archetypes that threaten to derail sustainability and justice transformations during critical transition phases. To navigate these risks, the authors propose developing three transformative capacities: harnessing hope and imagination, hospicing with dignity, and enabling radical collaboration while holding paradoxes.
Collaboration in action: How to collectively work towards systems change
This report examines how diverse capital providers collaborate to achieve systems change. It identifies catalytic capital as a pivotal tool for de-risking investments and mobilising private funds. Key findings highlight the necessity of trust, long-term partnerships, and shared metrics to overcome structural barriers and address the $4 trillion SDG financing gap.
Energy transition index series
The Energy Transition Index is a benchmark series providing a structured, data-driven framework to assess national energy systems and track transition progress across 120 countries. It evaluates performance through security, equity, and sustainability lenses, alongside transition readiness factors, helping decision-makers identify gaps and understand the conditions required for resilience.
The age of interconnected risks: How interdependencies are shaping the next generation of systemic crises
This report examines rising systemic vulnerabilities driven by interconnected financial, digital, natural, and socio-economic risks. It highlights the gap between market pricing and actual risk, noting how AI, climate change, and geopolitical fragmentation amplify potential crises. It proposes collaborative monitoring and expanded risk-transfer capacity to strengthen global resilience.
Reframing financial markets as complex systems: Tools for systemic risk analysis, portfolio management, and system-level investing
This report explores financial markets as complex adaptive systems, advocating for modelling techniques like agent-based models and network theory. It highlights how these tools improve systemic risk analysis and portfolio management by capturing non-linear behaviours, herding, and interconnectedness, providing a framework for more resilient and adaptive global financial systems.
Climate Pathways Project Simulation Tools
A suite of interactive climate policy simulators, including En-ROADS, developed by MIT Sloan and Climate Interactive. These tools help leaders and finance professionals model the impacts of carbon pricing, electrification, and energy efficiency on global warming in real-time.
Innovations in sustainability systems to support corporate due diligence
A resource hub from ISEAL Alliance providing case studies on how sustainability systems support corporate due diligence. It explores innovations like gamified worker training and digital risk assessments to improve supply chain transparency and human rights monitoring.
Role of Japanese firms in the East Asian electronics industry: A supply chain network perspective
This research analyses Japan's position in the East Asian electronics supply chain using network science. While Japan remains a vital upstream supplier of components and equipment, its dominance in mainstream semiconductors has declined. Conversely, Japanese firms maintain strong leadership within automotive clusters and unique electronics-automation-utilities ecosystems.
The Big Fix Resource Collection
The Big Fix is a resource hub from Resilience.org and the Post Carbon Institute focused on systemic resilience. It provides curated research and news to help professionals understand and navigate the interconnected ecological and economic challenges of the 21st-century polycrisis.
Systems stewardship: Managing interconnected climate risks for lasting value
This report examines how Australian investors apply systems stewardship to manage interconnected climate risks. It identifies key practices, such as collaborative engagement and policy advocacy, while highlighting barriers like resource constraints. Six recommendations are provided to help investors safeguard long-term returns and support a net-zero transition.
Why resilience starts with understanding extremes
Climate resilience requires understanding high-impact, low-probability tail risks. Rising temperatures are transforming extreme events into common occurrences. Using examples like the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, this report advocates for assessing high-end warming scenarios and tipping points to evaluate the robustness of portfolios and assets against cascading physical risks.
A novel multilevel conceptual framework for flood risk governance
This research introduces a multilevel framework integrating flood hazard modelling, social vulnerability assessments, and risk communication. Designed for data-scarce environments, it addresses analytical silos by treating communication as a coequal component. The framework supports equitable decision-making through consequence-oriented risk surfaces and transparent uncertainty representation for municipal planning.
Artificial intelligence and sustainability transitions: Emergent opportunities, risks, and governance
This report examines the intersection of artificial intelligence and sustainability transitions, detailing opportunities and risks across environment, energy, labour, finance, and democracy. It proposes a three-layered governance framework and a phased roadmap for global scientific alignment, interim safety measures, and a binding international framework convention to ensure societal well-being.
The total portfolio approach (TPA): A practical guide for navigating the transition to TPA
The report examines the Total Portfolio Approach as an alternative to traditional strategic asset allocation. Drawing on interviews and survey evidence, it explains TPA’s investment, governance, risk, sustainability and organisational foundations, outlines a five-level transition pathway, and provides practical guidance for asset owners assessing readiness and implementation.
Toward transformation in finance: Seeds of nature-positive futures
This research examines "finance for nature seeds" — innovative initiatives aimed at transforming the financial sector to reverse nature loss. By analysing 92 global projects, the study identifies diverse approaches to funding nature stewardship, highlighting current reliance on market-based mechanisms and the potential for inclusive, value-pluralistic financial systems.
