ESG Masterclass Climate Risk Management for Businesses and ESG as a supporting Tool

Hosted by
Prof. Kaushik Ranjan Bandyopadhyay, Chairperson Centre for Business Sustainability, Member, Board of Directors
Enterprise Incubation Centre (EIC), IIM Lucknow

Introduction
It is a common knowledge that what gets measured gets managed. One of the biggest criticisms that makes the integration of ESG (Environment, Social and Governance) risks in business challenging is the issue of measurement and benchmarking. This lacuna inherently unleashes a much bigger concern of transparency and accountability in corporate reporting while identifying, measuring, and reporting on the key material or risky issues for business. In fact the stakeholder centric framework of governance that forms the cornerstone of the debate and discussion on ESG often gets challenged largely on the issue of measurability. When it comes to the ‘E’ part of ESG, however, a reasonable progress has been made in the climate front especially after the Paris Agreement and with the Task Force on Climate Related Financial Disclosure submitting its report in 2017. With COP 27 knocking at the door, the masterclass aims to set the context of ESG especially for a developing country like India with a particular reference to the issue of climate risk.

Objectives:
The masterclass will highlight on some of the key issues that arises for business when it comes to internalising and addressing the concerns for climate risk and help the participants get insights on
1) different forms of climate risk that a business is exposed to
2) strategy and framework to address the same
3) how to prepare for the journey that lies ahead.

About the Facilitator

Prof. Kaushik Ranjan Bandyopadhyay, Chairperson Centre for Business Sustainability, Member, Board of Directors
Prof. Kaushik Ranjan Bandyopadhyay is an economist and policy specialist with more than two decades of academic, policy research and administrative experiences. He is currently also the Chairperson of the Centre for Business Sustainability and a member of the Board of Directors of Enterprise Incubation Centre at IIM Lucknow (IIML). Prior to joining IIML, he was engaged with the Energy and Climate Group at International Institute of Sustainable Development (IISD) as a Principal Policy Adviser. In this capacity he has also been leading the work on UNEP India Mission on Measurement of SDG 12.c.1. Till recently, he was MBA Programme Director at the Department of Business and Sustainability at The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) School of Advanced Studies and was also the founding Head of the Department. His notable past engagement includes serving as senior consultant with India Consensus Project jointly administered by Copenhagen Consensus Centre, USA and Tata Trust; member of the sub-group on transport sector formed by Government of India for providing inputs to the India Chapter of the Energy Technology Perspectives 2010 of International Energy Agency (IEA); columnist on energy sector with Financial Express; visiting faculty with United Nations University (UNU-IIST); visiting scholar with Asian Growth Institute (AGI), Japan under Japanese Society of Promotion of Science (JSPS); transport specialist for a ADB commissioned project on Low Carbon Transport in India and China; invitee consultant with IEA/OECD; Economic officer with Finance Commission, Government of India and Research Officer to erstwhile UN Special Rapporteur on Right to Development.