Writer, Investor, Advisory Director, Berkshire Partners – Professor of Practice, Fletcher School Tufts University
The problem is “garbage in, garbage out,” said Kenneth Pucker, a director at Berkshire Partners who teaches at Tufts University. “The reporting is not complete, results are mostly unaudited, and they are not comparable.”
https://www.courthousenews.com/do-you-know-whats-really-in-your-esg-fund/
“On a relative basis, flows to ESG funds remain healthy, as compared to traditional funds. So one could say that from the asset managers’ perspective, the ESG model isn’t broken. Actually, its proven very resilient,” says Pucker, who has written extensively on ESG investing. “From the perspective of the planet, ESG is almost irrelevant. And from the perspective of the individual or institutional investor who thinks they are getting either alpha impact, I would argue it is broken.”
https://www.barrons.com/articles/sustainable-funds-face-big-challenges-esg-winners-51672961981
‘Sustainability has become big business,’ said Ken Pucker, senior lecturer on sustainable business dynamics at The Fletcher School at Tufts University.
https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/as-brands-lurch-towards-green-goals-a-booming-business-of-climate-change-is-emerging/ 
More people are buying pre-loved items as they make greener choices, but there’s a long way to go to fix the fashion industry’s 
https://www.adweek.com/commerce/resale-exploding-is-not-an-automatic-win-for-the-climate/
The beleaguered environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investment sector has taken a pummeling from all sides this year, most recently from a Republican-led offensive accusing $8 trillion asset manager BlackRock and other investment companies of hostility toward the oil and gas sector.
https://fortune.com/2022/12/19/esg-investing-faces-challenges-from-all-sides-can-it-survive/
In recent years, financial firms have revamped dozens of mutual funds into E.S.G. dedicated funds — seeking to cash in on growing demand for such investments.
Thank you to the Economist for interviewing me for this piece. It is spot on. Speaking of ESG investing, the article notes “it has a negligible impact on carbon emissions, especially by the highest polluters. Its attempt to address social issues such as workplace diversity is hard to measure. As for governance, the ESG industry does a lousy job of holding itself to account, let alone the companies it is supposed to be stewarding. It makes outsized claims to investors. It just unmanageable demands on companies.” Not a great report card.
All that said, diligence on non financial factors is a must for any sane 21C investor. To abet, reporting should be standardized and audited. Even so, it is unreasonable to expect that ESG investing will do much to advance planetary welfare.
The environmental, social and governance (ESG) approach to investment is broken. It needs to be streamlined and stripped of sanctimoniousness, argues Henry Tricks
Read full article:
https://www.economist.com/special-report/2022/07/21/a-broken-system-needs-urgent-repairs
Business of Fashion
“The narrative we’ve told ourselves around win-win solutions has deceived everyone into thinking there are no trade-offs,” said Kenneth Pucker, a senior lecturer at the Tufts Fletcher School and an advisory director at Berkshire Partners. “There are huge trade offs.”
* Decoupling = green growth. Attractive conceptually. Very hard practically. Especially post elimination of easy waste.
* Conceptual win-wins = eco efficiency, fortune at the bottom of the pyramid, creating shared value, circularity, regeneration…have yet to yield much, beyond rhetoric. Patagonia’s Worn Wear = < 1% of revenue.
* New Business Models = rental, reuse, repair …are not yet sustainable …meaning profitable. Hard to fund especially in an environment when profits matter.
* BioBased Materials = often replace less environmentally destructive processes, face valley of death funding challenges and often rely on scarce feedstocks. Also, harder to fund when profit matters.
Net. Change the rules. Make excess consumption less profit rich. Pass the NY Fashion Act.