Environmental, social and governance (ESG) efforts are the number one priority for Singapore executives, but the majority believe their organisations have accidentally overstated the impact of sustainability initiatives, according to a global survey by Google Cloud.
Business leaders from Singapore, Thailand and Germany rank ESG efforts as their top organisational priority, according to the results of the second annual CXO Sustainability Survey, released on April 25. Commissioned by Google Cloud, the survey heard from 1,476 top-level executives in 16 markets, including four Asian markets: Japan, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand.
Globally, the findings show that ESG efforts have fallen from being the number one organisational priority in 2022 to number three in 2023.
The vast majority of respondents in Singapore say customers are more likely to engage and do business with sustainable brands (97%). They believe that delaying or scaling back on sustainability goals is damaging to company value (87%).
However, 85% of these respondents also said that their company leadership is not fully aligned on sustainability-related decisions — the highest percentage out of all the markets surveyed.
Uncertain economic conditions mean that businesses (85%) are challenged with achieving progress on their companies’ sustainability goals while operating on lower budgets than before, says Google Cloud.
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Green hypocrisy
Corporate greenwashing and green hypocrisy are pervasive concerns among local executives, with close to seven in 10 respondents in Singapore (69%) saying that their organisation has overstated or inaccurately represented the impact of its sustainability initiatives.
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Most of these executives (92%) believe greenwashing is accidental, such as when companies cannot effectively measure results or progress.
That said, the concerns of local respondents could point to a healthy level of organisational awareness. Some 55% of local executives already have a measurement program for their sustainability efforts in place, compared to 37% of global respondents.
More than half (55%) also believe that deploying advanced measurement tools can help them further advance their organisations’ sustainability efforts, compared to 47% of global respondents.
Sherie Ng, Singapore country director at Google Cloud, says executives are under pressure to prioritise driving revenue and optimising client relationships. They point to the lack of leadership alignment amid the current macroeconomic environment as the reason for flagging sustainability efforts, she adds.
“To turn this around, executives who are accountable for achieving progress on their companies’ sustainability goals must demonstrate to their peers — through the use of data-driven tools — that financial performance and fulfilling ESG responsibilities is not a zero-sum game,” says Ng.
