With ESG losing its shine and climate disclosure mandates softening, it’s time to redefine sustainability — as a story of strength, foresight and future-fitness.
A moment to step back – and look forward
Two different shifts are reshaping the sustainability reporting landscape right now.
Globally, a growing political and social backlash has softened enthusiasm for ESG — challenging its usefulness, complexity and perceived overreach. And here in Aotearoa New Zealand, the Government has just announced plans to ease mandatory climate disclosure requirements for many businesses.
One is gradual and sentiment-driven, the other sudden and regulatory. But together, they signal a broader reset. After years of increasing detail and compliance-heavy reporting, we may be entering a new phase — one that invites a rethink of what sustainability communication is really for.
From compliance to consequence
For the past decade, Sustainability, ESG and Climate Disclosures have often been used somewhat interchangeably, but they mean quite different things.
Sustainability is the broadest and oldest idea — a systems view of how a business endures and prospers within the world around it. It’s inherently long-term, connecting strategy, culture and purpose.
ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) reframed those same ideas through an investor lens. It sought measurable, comparable data to help markets assess non-financial risk and performance — useful, but often shorter-term and financially framed.
Climate disclosure sits within the “E” of ESG, providing the hard science, regulation-driven component — quantifying emissions, modelling transition risk, and aligning with frameworks like TCFD or the XRB standards.
Now, global scepticism toward ESG and local relaxation of climate disclosure rules are converging to create uncertainty — and opportunity. With less pressure to comply line-by-line, businesses can re-engage with the broader, more meaningful definition of sustainability: one centred on resilience, adaptability and future-fitness.
Resilience shouldn’t just mean withstanding events so you can stay standing; it should mean evolving to become stronger because of them.
The value of long-term thinking
This is where sustainability earns its place as a business strategy, not a moral posture.
It’s about understanding the systems a company operates within — environmental, social, economic — and how to remain viable in each of them over the long term.
Investors and employees alike are looking for that perspective. They want to see that a business understands its direction of travel and has the foresight to plan for what’s next.
With less time absorbed by technical compliance work, companies can now return to reporting to communicate their strategy for resilience, innovation and trust — the qualities that genuinely drive confidence and value.
Why Integrated Reporting matters again
When ESG and climate disclosure mandates dominated the conversation, the Integrated Reporting (<IR>) Framework naturally took a back seat. The urgency of compliance narrowed focus onto the measurable and immediate.
Now, as both global sentiment and local regulation recalibrate, integrated reporting has fresh relevance. It provides the long view — connecting strategy, governance, performance and prospects to show how an organisation creates sustainable value over time.
Where ESG can feel fragmented and climate reporting can be highly technical, <IR> brings them back into a coherent, business-wide story. It balances the what with the why — helping companies explain not just their impact, but their intent.
Where this leaves us
Together, these global and local shifts offer a pause point — a chance to reset how we talk about sustainability.
The regulatory pendulum may have swung back, but the expectation of responsible, forward-looking business hasn’t. What’s changing is the opportunity to tell that story with more clarity, coherence and connection to strategy.
If ESG’s light has dimmed and climate disclosure’s heat has cooled (figuratively speaking!), what remains illuminated is sustainability itself — in its truest form: long-term, systems-based thinking about how to thrive in a changing world.
And that’s where smart, strategic communication comes in — connecting information with insight, compliance with consequence, and reporting with real business value.
