MSCI ESG Research LLCESG and Climate Trends to Watch for 2023msci.comWelcome to MSCI’s ESG and Climate Trends to Watch for 2023.We’re heading into the new year against a backdrop of a major war in Europe, inflation, cost-of-living crises, energy markets in turmoil, rising interest rates, pandemic fatigue, political uncertainty and what feels like an unending stream of climate-induced disasters. At the same time, ESG itself is being put under the spotlight. Regulators around the world are upping the ante on everything from greenwashed fund names to stricter climate target disclosures, while the very idea of ESG investing is increasingly politicized.Which is to say: There’s a lot going on around the world. And it is shaping both the investment environment and the challenges and opportunities facing companies.Now, if you’re a longtime fan of our annual ESG trends research, you’ll notice things look a little different this time. The large-scale trends shaping the ESG-investing world are well-known at this point: climate change risk and the road to net-zero, the growing existential threat of biodiversity loss, social inequalities, regulation and, lately, debate and controversy over what exactly ESG should be. So this year, we’ve gone back to basics and asked the experts on our research team: With everything that is happening around us, what specifically will you be watching in 2023, and why? The following pages contain a selection of the answers to that question. Not surprisingly, many touch on climate change across a variety of angles: from carbon credit funds to insured emissions, and from scrutiny of net-zero targets to decarbonizing industrial real estate. Regulation is now top of mind not just...
