Training group to expand ESG course to bay area
The International Chamber of Sustainable Development (ICSD), a Hong Kong-based professional training body, will expand its accredited environmental, social and governance (ESG) planner course to the Greater Bay Area in September.
The addition was set to be part of a bigger expansion, as the non-governmental organisation also planned to offer the education programme in Southeast Asia and the Middle East by working with partners in Singapore and Bahrain, ICSD adviser Peter Fong Kwok-wing said.
“China is a vast market for sustainable development, and mainland regulators have strengthened requirements on ESG disclosure and action plans,” Fong, who is also vice-president of the Hong Kong Financial Services Institute, said yesterday. “This course will aim to meet mainland organisations’ unmet needs, starting with the Greater Bay Area.”
It will be offered in Mandarin with Chinese teaching materials to cater to the needs of mainland participants. Online registration has started.
The Greater Bay Area, a planned unified economic zone comprising Hong Kong, Macau and nine cities in Guangdong province, has a total population of more than 86 million.
The Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges published new climate and sustainability disclosure guidelines in February. They require more than 400 listed companies – accounting for more than half of the market value in the exchanges – to publish sustainability reports covering their greenhouse gas emissions and decarbonisation plans by 2026.
Under tightened rules announced last month by the stock exchange in Hong Kong, the largest listed firms must report their full supply-chain emissions for the financial year beginning January 1, 2026, as part of a bid to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.
Those companies already have to disclose emissions arising from their own operations and plans to reduce them, along with data related to social and governance issues.
In the past two years, more than 3,000 people have completed the ICSD’s certified ESG planner course in Hong Kong through online and in-person programmes offered by Chinese University, the Hong Kong Management Association and Lingnan University.
Many qualified for a subsidy of up to 80 per cent of the course fees through the government’s green financial support scheme, ICSD founding chairman Angus Yip Wing-hang said.
Participants must complete a case study, either on their own or with an external organisation, to analyse the ESG challenges they face, evaluate their financial and social impact, come up with a comprehensive action plan, review the outcome and identify areas for improvement.
“The programme adopts a practical [approach] rather than a theory and examination-based approach to building capability in tackling ESG challenges,” Yip said. “It is also different from other ESG courses that focus on applications in finance and investment.”
Mainland regulators have strengthened requirements on ESG disclosure PETER FONG, ICSD ADVISER