From global to local: for ESG data that really engages
ESG data is no longer enough if it remains global and abstract. To generate real engagement, they must be embodied, localized, understood. This article explores why and how to place ESG as close as possible to the territories and actors concerned.
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From global to local: for ESG data that really engages
To be effective, ESG data must be embodied, localized, understood — not remote, abstract, globalized. To really engage, you have to talk about the near, not the distant.
Extra-financial data has invaded annual reports, CSR roadmaps and ESG platforms. However, they struggle to generate real commitment internally and externally.
Why?
Because they often talk about things that are too far away. Too abstract. Too global. Save water, limit emissions, better manage waste: generic injunctions that do not resonate if they are not embodied. However, to involve employees, partners and citizens, you have to talk about what concerns them directly.
The Global Repository Trap
ESG standards are designed on a global or European scale. They compare businesses from very different countries, cultures, and economic realities.
Result: we end up comparing a French textile SME to a Bangladeshi subcontractor... when their social, environmental, regulatory footprint, or even their economic model, are incomparable.
The problem is not the norm. It is the standardization of reading grids. A CSR policy that makes sense is first and foremost a policy rooted in its territory, its sector, its realities.
Empathy comes from the local
Let's take an example. Asking an employee to save water” will have little effect. But telling him that “every liter saved by maintaining the groundwater that feeds the surrounding villages, including the one where his family lives” changes everything. The lever for action is identification. It's in proximity.
You can't save the planet with global averages. You engage people when you talk to them about what they see and what they are experiencing.
Rethinking ESG data as a local management tool
ESG reporting must move away from the “one-size-fits-all” logic. It must once again become a management tool in the service of locally anchored performance.
This assumes:
- To recontextualize the indicators (by sector, by employment area, by type of local resource),
- To territorialize impacts (regional footprint, dependence on local resources, direct social benefits),
- To give meaning to action plans (e.g.: “reduction of emissions” → “reduction of intersite routes in the XXXX region through the sharing of logistics hubs”).
First the region, then the world
In an uncertain world, the businesses that survive will be the ones that can protect their immediate ecosystem—their resources, their partners, their employment pool. Before we want to save the world, let's help businesses do good for their region.