ABSTRACT
This chapter explains why measuring the impacts of business on the world is challenging. ESG data provides only a shallow snapshot of reality. Metrics are invented measures, often arbitrary approximations. Unlike emissions, water and waste, most issues in sustainable business are complex phenomena. We can only ever use proxies to try to capture abstract ideas because they are not directly observable. This chapter contributes to the research by contrasting sustainability measurement with financial accounting. It presents sustainable business as ill-suited to Newtonian reductionism. Choices are involved in all methodologies: setting the scope, selecting metrics, deciding scoring and inventing weighting. This makes ESG ratings, rankings, scores and data sets human choices that are sometimes unreliable approximations of impact. Four types of metric are explained: input, activity, commitment and output. These are linked to outcomes and impacts. Sustainability standards are described as a social process. A solution in the form of systems thinking is outlined to help understand context and make sense of complexity.
