CSR/ESG: Reporting on Sustainability Contributions and Impacts

Due to a combination of public pressure and legal requirements, an increasing number of companies and other organizational entities — in India and around the world — publish Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and/or Environmental, Social, & Governance (ESG) reports.

Why do they do this?

According to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), a leader in defining best practices for sustainability reporting:

From the need to safeguard marine habitats to responding to pressures on natural resources and growing inequality, our world faces significant economic, environmental and social challenges. By doing business in a way that aligns long-term growth strategies with care for people and planet, organizations can play a crucial role in sustainable development. The GRI Sustainability Reporting Standards (GRI Standards) help organizations increase their transparency and communicate their sustainability contributions and impacts.^[1]

The Current State of People and Planet

The majority of the world’s people are becoming increasingly concerned about the activities and actions of for-profit companies and large organizational entities because they are largely responsible for the current state of people and planet, which is worsening at an accelerated pace, namely through widespread inequity and ecocide. This public concern, expressed through protests and legislative measures, has resulted in direct and indirect pressure on for-profit companies and organizational entities to be more transparent about their impacts on sustainability.

Inequity is growing

Inequity (or inequality) manifests itself in many ways, including: injustice, poverty, disenfranchisement, identity loss, hunger, and violence. An example of inequity is global wealth inequality.

According to Inequality.org, a project of the Institute for Policy Studies, which has been tracking inequality-related news and views for nearly two decades:

Inequality has been on the rise across the globe for several decades…. economic gaps have continued to grow as the very richest amass unprecedented levels of wealth…. in 2023 the world’s richest 1 percent… owned 47.5 percent of all the world’s wealth – equivalent to roughly $214 trillion…. The wealthiest 0.001 percent, a group representing around 56,000 multi-millionaires, now hold three times more wealth than the bottom half of the world population. Their share has grown steadily from 3.7 percent in 1995 to 6.1 percent in 2025…. The world’s 26 richest billionaires… owned an astonishing $2.872 trillion in wealth as of 2023. This combined wealth is greater than the total goods and services most nations produce on an annual basis…^[2]

Ecocide is worsening

Ecocide (killing of ecologies) has widespread deleterious impacts, including: irreversible biodiversity loss, pollution, and the climate crisis.

According to the World Meteorological Organization’s State of the Global Climate 2025:

Increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide,… reached their highest level in 800 000 years in 2024…. The past three years are the three warmest years in the 176 year combined land and ocean observational record…. The ice sheets on Antarctica and Greenland have both lost significant mass since satellite records began…. The rate of global sea-level rise has increased since satellite measurements began in 1993…. These rapid large-scale changes in the Earth system have cascading impacts on human and natural systems, contributing to food insecurity and displacement…. Human health is shaped by the changing climate. Rising temperatures, shifting rainfall patterns and changes in extremes are affecting where and when health risks emerge, how severe they become and who is most exposed. Extreme heat has wide-ranging impacts on mortality, livelihoods, ecosystems and health systems, while also amplifying risks such as vector- and water-borne diseases and mental health stressors.^[3] (emphases added)

Unsustainability (Worsening Inequity and Ecocide) Is Deepening 

In 1987, the United Nations Brundtland Commission defined sustainability as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”^[4]

An increasing number of companies and other organizational entities are regularly publishing CSR/ESG reports, purportedly to communicate their sustainability contributions and impacts, and even donating money to projects intended to further sustainability. However, the fact is that, globally, sustainability is not being achieved; rather, unsustainability, or the worsening of inequity and ecocide, is deepening.

So, the question before us is: do companies and organizations really wish to operate and work in ways that bring about sustainability? Or do they merely wish to comply with CSR/ESG reporting (and philanthropic) requirements — whether legally imposed or due to consumer/public pressure?

Why We Must Reframe Organizational Strategies

Many for-profit companies operate within the paradigm of corporate extractivism, which is predicated on a multitude of dogmas, notably:^[5] 

• segregation (e.g., humans from their ecologies, humans from each other, siloed knowledge areas);
• individualism, commodification, and othering;
• fragmentation, reductionism, and control; 
• the right of dominion (e.g., the right to exclusionary private property); and
• a scarcity mindset.

This paradigm of corporate extractivism appears to be causing deepening unsustainability. Thus, we must look outside of this paradigm to achieve sustainability, i.e., reduce/eliminate inequity and ecocide.

From corporate extractivism (back) to collaborative regeneration

The action principle of Collaborative Regeneration lies outside the paradigm of corporate extractivism and can be understood based on at least three first principles that apply to a healthy ecological web (ecoweb) comprising abiotic (non-living) components and many types of biodiverse organisms (including humans) existing ecosymbiotically:^[5] 

1. Every living being is governed by the evolutionary imperative of survival and propagation, which it is able to achieve due to its inherent intelligence and creativity. As a result of intelligent and creative network-building (self-organizing), living beings in an ecoweb are able to collaboratively meet their basic needs regeneratively^[6].
2. Living beings are adaptively resilient (ecosymbiotically resilient), meaning they have an inherent ability to recover from and adapt to change (adversity) as an interconnected-interdependent (ecosymbiotic), intelligent, creative network of biodiverse organisms and abiotic components.
3. Members of each human community evolved both physiologically and culturally to optimally adapt themselves to the ecoweb they ancestrally inhabited/inhabit, enabling the community to autonomously meet all basic needs through its own efforts locally and regeneratively (ecosymbiotic self-reliance). 

Continued... (scroll to below the bibliography to access next part)

[1] The GRI Standards: Enabling transparency on organizational impacts, Global Reporting Initiative (GRI): (2022) (https://www.globalreporting.org/media/wmxlklns/about-gri-brochure-2022.pdf).

[2] Inequality.org, Global Inequality, Institute for Policy Studies (last accessed 25.04.2026) (https://inequality.org/facts/global-inequality/#global-wealth-inequality).

[3] World Meteorological Organization, State of the Global Climate 2025, World Meteorological Organization: ISBN 978-92-63-11391-7 (2026) (https://library.wmo.int/idurl/4/69807).

[4] Sustainability, United Nations (last accessed 26.04.2026) (https://www.un.org/en/academic-impact/sustainability).

[5] K. Mitra, EcoResilience: Strengthening Economic and Ecosymbiotic Resilience to Ensure Survival, Ecosymbionts all Regenerate Together (EaRTh): DOI-EaRTh032026-001 (31 Mar., 2026).

[6] Regenerative is characterized by that which restores, revitalizes, generates, and/or nurtures in a way that leads to ecosymbiotic health and wellbeing.