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ESG is increasingly about resilience, and rising geopolitical risk and trade wars strengthen this view, according to Rathbones, one of the UK’s leading wealth and asset management groups.
Risks that were once treated separately, from climate and energy to technology, supply chains and geopolitics, are interconnected, so a shock in one area can amplify seemingly independent risks elsewhere. Investors who assess each in isolation risk missing how resilient, or vulnerable, a business really is.
The issue is a central theme of today’s Rathbones Responsible Investment Summit 2026, “Shifting Ground: Navigating a world in transition”, which features a keynote speech from Nick Robins, Senior Director, Finance and Private Sector at the World Resources Institute, and discussions on how companies and investors can respond to a shifting landscape, spanning energy, business resilience and technology.
Kate Elliot, Head of the Responsible Investment Centre of Excellence at Rathbones, said: “Geopolitical tension and trade wars have led some to ask whether sustainable investment is dead. We don’t think it is, but we are seeing a change in the language used to talk about it. Reframing ESG as resilience is about more than simply applying a new label, it represents a growing awareness that climate, energy security, geopolitics, technology and supply chains are interconnected, so a shock in one area can amplify risks that look independent. Looking at each in isolation can leave investors with an incomplete picture.
“For us, assessing resilience means looking beyond what a company is exposed to and asking how it would actually respond if something went wrong. The characteristics we're interested in are adaptability, optionality and visibility. Resilience isn't about trying to predict the next crisis. It's about understanding whether a business has the governance, financial capacity and operational flexibility to respond when circumstances change.”
Corporate reporting and investment analysis tend to treat these risks separately, even though disruption can pass through the same systems. Rathbones argues that investors therefore need to understand the dependencies beneath a business, from suppliers and logistics routes to energy grids, cloud providers, commodities and critical infrastructure.
Looking beneath the company
The summit will examine what recent crises have revealed about the resilience of companies and the lessons investors can draw from disruption across energy markets, supply chains and geopolitics. Rathbones argues that conventional company ESG data, while useful, may not provide a complete picture where critical dependencies sit further down a supply chain or in shared infrastructure. Among the areas investors can consider are common sub-tier suppliers, transport and energy infrastructure, cloud and semiconductor dependencies and commodity or ecosystem inputs.
Rathbones also draws a distinction between supplier quality and network resilience: several apparently diversified direct suppliers may ultimately depend on the same processor, port, commodity or technology platform.
Ivo Darnley, Managing Director of Rathbones Investment Management, added: “Change creates both risk and opportunity, and for investors the challenge is to understand which businesses can adapt, which trends may endure and where long-term value may emerge.”
What happens on day two of the crisis?
Spotting a risk is one thing; judging how a business would respond once it hits is another.
Corporate sustainability disclosure has improved in areas including governance, material risks, climate scenarios and targets, but the summit will examine whether investors have sufficient information to assess a company's actual recovery capability.
ical and nature risks, alternative capacity and substitutability, tested recovery times and the extent to which identified adaptation measures are actually funded.
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