We hear it everywhere: ESG is supposedly “dead.” A casualty of regulatory simplification, of European political backsliding, of the weakening momentum around the CSRD and the CSDDD, or of a global conservative backlash that frames any environmental constraint as an economic handicap. The diagnosis is tempting. Yet it is historically inaccurate and strategically dangerous. Because to judge whether ESG is dying, one must first remember where it came from.
Looking back: when ESG was little more than window dressing
In the early 2000s, ESG was almost entirely a communications exercise. Publishing a "sustainable development report" was enough to tick the box. Indicators were vague, inconsistent, and rarely audited. Climate trajectories didn't exist. Supply chains were largely off the agenda. ESG sat at the margins disconnected from investment decisions, procurement, innovation, and strategy. It inconvenienced no one. It cost almost nothing. And above all, it changed nothing.
Measured against that baseline, declaring ESG "dead" today is a fundamental misreading of history. It has never been more structuring, more deeply embedded, or more fiercely contested and that, precisely, is the sign that it has become central.
Why ESG is under attack
ESG isn't facing a backlash because it has failed. It's facing a backlash because it is starting to produce real effects.
The CSRD, despite its limitations, has forced thousands of companies to genuinely confront their emissions, resource dependencies, social impacts, and climate risks. It has brought climate, biodiversity, and sustainability into boardrooms, finance functions, and capital allocation decisions. That shift in status from cosmetic exercise to strategic function is exactly what explains the ferocity of the rollbacks seen in 2024–2025. ESG has become political because it now cuts to the heart of the business model. But mistaking regulatory retreat for the death of ESG is a serious analytical error.
What is quietly taking shape beneath the surface
While public debate fixates on the weakening of standards, something quite different is happening inside companies and across local contexts. ESG is decentralising. It is leaving headquarters to take root in subsidiaries, factories, supply chains, and communities. It is no longer the domain of an isolated team, but a shared responsibility spanning finance, procurement, innovation, marketing, and operations. It is becoming measurable not out of bureaucratic obsession, but because measurement now directly affects access to markets, financing, tenders, and social licence to operate.
An impact that cannot be measured is an invisible one. And an invisible impact is a strategic liability. It is also becoming more demanding. Less focused on marginal harm reduction, and more oriented toward fundamentally different business models: circularity, the functional economy, material restraint, partial reshoring, and cross-sector collaboration. In short, ESG is moving beyond compliance and into the territory of genuine economic courage.
From ESG to territorial and regenerative responsibility
Perhaps the deepest transformation is this: ESG is no longer only global and abstract it is becoming local. The focus is shifting from distant 2030 and 2050 targets to decisions being made here and now, on water, land use, biodiversity, employment, and community resilience.
In parallel, the idea of a regenerative economy is gaining real ground. No longer just "doing less harm," but actively creating positive outcomes: restoring ecosystems, strengthening shared resources, rebuilding social ties, and recovering a sense of purpose in economic life. This shift in perspective is decisive. It restores a genuinely desirable horizon to the transition, at a time when compliance-driven ESG had boxed itself into defensive risk management.
In a fragmented world, neutrality is no longer an option
The deepening fractures political, social, and media-driven are placing companies before a new kind of responsibility. Inaction is no longer a neutral position. Standing still means reinforcing the status quo, and with it the current trajectories on climate, social equity, and democracy.
Companies will not save the world. But every day, through their investments, products, narratives, and alliances, they are actively choosing which version of the world they reinforce.
So the question is not whether ESG is dead. It isn't. The real question is: which ESG do we want now? One reduced to minimal compliance fragile, reshaped by every political cycle? Or a sustainability agenda that is genuinely owned, widely distributed, rigorously measured, rooted in place, and capable of truly transforming business models?
The first is indeed disappearing. The second is only just beginning. And that is good news.
