Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG)

Ira Gupta Tuteja

Advisor - CSR, Corporate Citizenship
KPMG in India                        

We believe that the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 4 (Quality Education), is a powerful enabler of all other SDGs. Recognising this transformative potential, we support initiatives across education, employment, and entrepreneurship, aligned with our global commitment to empower 10 million disadvantaged youth by 2030, helping them build resilient futures and participate meaningfully in the economy and society.

Innovation-led CSR represents an important next frontier for creating impact at scale. While CSR capital has delivered meaningful grassroots outcomes, its ability to address complex systemic challenges will depend on building a strong and credible pipeline of innovation-led solutions.

This requires deeper ecosystem partnerships, sharper problem-solution fit, patient capital, and robust mechanisms to de-risk and measure impact. The roundtable reaffirmed that the opportunity ahead is not just to fund innovation, but to actively enable it to scale responsibly and sustainably.

AI and sustainability need to work hand in hand to create a better future for humanity. A better balance of both can help create a climate friendly future, green cities and positive social impact.

Circular economy depends on how everyday systems manage materials, waste and resources. The foundations of building a circular economy ecosystem in India have been underway for a few years now. However, without clear measurement, it becomes difficult to recognise the full value of these efforts.

Going ahead, we need improved mechanisms to track and quantify the environmental impact of circular activities. The challenge is to strengthen institutions and create reliable systems so that the environmental benefits generated can be clearly valued, verified and scaled.

Large infrastructure projects in major cities typically undergo robust ESG diligence aligned with environmental standards. The challenge becomes more complex in smaller cities, where projects such as water supply initiatives are often limited in scale. For these smaller projects, the cost of extensive project administration and compliance can be disproportionately high. There are also capacity constraints at the local level, across government agencies, private players, and advisors, particularly when it comes to having skilled resources to carry out consistent ESG diligence across multiple projects.

The absence of reliable data, established baselines, and mature models further adds to the complexity. In this context, automating diligence processes remains difficult until foundational data and capability gaps are addressed.

India’s development journey is entering a new phase, where the country’s growth story will be increasingly shaped by how efficiently we use our resources. The size of our population and the pace of economic activity are placing increasing pressure on natural resources, ecosystems, and waste management systems.

The circular economy offers an alternative to the 'take-make-dispose' model. The output of one industry becomes the input for another. As India works towards its net zero commitment by 2070, measurable environmental benefits become increasingly important. When emissions reductions from recycling, waste recovery, and resource efficiency are measured and recognised within credible carbon frameworks, they can also support economic value.

Secondary steel producers contribute more than 50% of the domestic steel production, and because of the scale, relevance and contribution without decarbonising this sector, India can’t achieve its net zero goals.

These producers use electric arc furnaces and induction furnaces; the latter tend to be more rudimentary operationally, with potential to address operational efficiencies and utilise greater renewables & scrap.

Advancing towards sustainability: The emergence of green mining technologies and practices

The Indian mining industry has been embracing greenmining technologies and practices – from electrification and automation to regenerative and water-efficient solutions – to drive sustainablity across operations and supply chains. The star rating system instituted by the Ministry of Mines, Govt of India (MoM) through Indian Bureau (IBM) for implementation of Sustainable Development Framework (SDF) has been working as an excellent impetus in this regard.

A more concerted effort to resolve challenges around efficient resource utilisation by:

• promoting beneficiation of low-grade ore,
• adoption of renewable/hybrid energy sources,
• mine closures as per approved plan through policy guidelines, and
• adoption of global best practices

can drive this mission towards sustainability even more strongly, reinforcing the need for collaborative innovation and ESG integration in mining.

The global economic paradigm is changing as companies are under tremendous pressure from people across the world to account for the social impact of their businesses. Moreover, endless growth with profit as the sole metric is no longer sustainable. The consequences of social and environmental imbalance are mostly seen in the long term. If allowed to go unchecked, the disruption caused may cause a significant dip in growth and corporate valuations.

Regulators and policymakers can support the transition for MSME into sustainablity by establishing digital public infrastructure for ESG reporting and certification, providing tax benefits and accessible financing for MSMEs and enabling learning at scale for greenskills programmes.

Central banks across the world are looking at embedding climate risk guidelines into financial frameworks. RBI came up with the draft guidelines for India last year. This has been followed up by the climate finance taxonomy, greenwashing guidelines, and carbon credit scheme. It's a realisation that there are massive risks are ahead of us unless we act with speed and at scale.