Corporate environmental and human rights commitments, an increasing number of which are binding, include a measure of company performance that is expressed as not negatively impacting and, even better, positively impacting the stakeholders and communities connected with the company. This is a hopeful development. It will lead to a better allocation of capital to more resilient companies with higher market capitalization, better relationships with the communities they affect and an overall positive impact on the state of the world. But it also entails a number of challenges.
Not getting the data on social impact entails relevant risks for investors, who may learn about pressing issues far too late – limiting their ability to adequately respond and risking problems becoming too big to handle, potentially derailing entire projects, triggering reputational damage or divestment. An increasing number of companies and financial institutions have faced examples of this.
The current magic formula for measuring impact is ESG, which has swept over business like a massive tsunami. We will be upfront. We don’t believe in it. Measuring the E, the S, and the G together simply does not work. There is too much aggregation. The ESG methods are not rigorous enough. We are glad that there are others, like The Economist and the Financial Times who agree with us.
As a business leader or investor there are several reasons why making robust investment decisions on the basis of currently available ESG data relating to social impact is suboptimal and therefore risky. It is generally based on an annual assessment. Most assessments are based on self-reporting by companies, big data analysis and occasional, rather superficial consultations with local communities in larger footprint projects where issues have arisen. Current methodologies are therefore not aligned with the relevant frameworks such as the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and OECD Guidelines that clearly require a focus on outcomes for rights holders that result from the operations of the company and not on the company’s structures, systems, and activities. The currently available data regarding social performance also do not effectively identify future risk in this field; they only show where past issues have arisen. Without reliable information on the perspectives of those affected it will be hard to assess which other future social risk a company is facing. Reliable social impact measurements should also be executed independently, much like it is done by auditors and rating agencies when they assess the financial accounts and market value of a company or project. Only in that way can company managers and investors rely on and invoke an independent assessment. We also see that the standards that are applied are not coherent.
The EU has also announced plans to come up with a social taxonomy and it is to be expected that it will draw attention to the importance of coherent measuring of these perspectives in connection with measuring social impact. The enhanced EU reporting standards for investors, which require measuring actual impact on affected stakeholders, emphasise the need for reliable data. The EU taxonomy will focus on outcomes for rights holders and not just on the measures companies implement to prevent risk. Therefore, the need for higher quality data to bridge this gap will become pressing for investors and companies alike.
We have developed a way to measure social impact better so business leaders and investors can mitigate social impact risks earlier and seize social impact opportunities in time. By focusing on stakeholders and engaging directly with the communities affected, selecting sites strategically, using state-of-the-art technology, Big Village Data is able to offer insights into social impact performance that have largely gone unmeasured until now, enabling business leaders and investors to better allocate risk and seize opportunity.
Identifying and qualifying community perspectives that encompass potential risks for the company.
Assessing counterparty risk in the supply chain or customer base that has the potential to damage the company reputation .
Discovering potential repercussions of diversifiable risk in the company through community feedback.
Benchmarking your company against other companies in the same sector or a configurable set.
You define the issues, we measure and crunch the data.
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