Author name: Sachin Nandha

Author: sachin nandha, trustee and director In boardrooms across the world, sustainability remains too often treated as a compliance obligation. Often it takes the form of a checklist to satisfy ESG disclosure requirements, reputational expectations, or LP due diligence. That framing, while once sufficient, is no longer fit for purpose. Environmental disruption, legal risk, and capital market realignment have moved sustainability from the periphery to the core of strategic governance.  According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2024, four of the top five risks facing the global economy by both likelihood and impact are environmental in nature, including extreme weather, biodiversity loss, and natural resource scarcity. These are not hypothetical challenges. They are today’s boardroom concerns. For directors, especially those leading private equity-backed firms, the question is not whether to act, but how fast their governance models can adapt.  Why This Matters: The Fiduciary Case for Sustainability  This is not a philosophical debate. It is a fiduciary reckoning.  Institutional capital is already moving. Morningstar reports that sustainable funds attracted nearly $30 billion in net inflows in Q3 2023, even as traditional equity and bond funds saw net outflows. CalPERS, the Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global, and Temasek have embedded ESG as core screening criteria, not as a matter of optics, but of resilience and returns.  McKinsey’s 2020 research confirmed that companies with high ESG performance achieved valuation premiums of 10–20% in M&A transactions. Harvard Business School studies show that ESG-integrated firms significantly outperform peers in both profitability and equity returns over the long term. LPs are responding accordingly. BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, now asks companies to demonstrate how sustainability is integrated into long-term strategy, not just risk registers.  This reshapes the capital formation landscape. General partners who lag on sustainability integration may not just lose reputational standing, but they may lose access to capital.  The Rising Tide of Litigation and Regulation  Risk perception is being redefined in real time. The traditional model: governance through quarterly financial oversight and legal compliance is being displaced by a new standard: governance through strategic foresight.  Legal liability is expanding. As of 2023, over 2,500 climate-related legal actions have been filed globally. A landmark example is ClientEarth v. Shell plc (2023), in which the environmental law firm took direct legal action against Shell’s board of directors under the UK Companies Act for failing to manage climate risk as a fiduciary duty. While the case was dismissed, it has set a powerful precedent for future litigation.  Meanwhile, regulators are raising the bar. The EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) will now apply to over 50,000 companies, including non-EU entities with significant European operations. These firms must disclose governance structures, environmental impact, and forward-looking sustainability metrics under the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) by 2025. In the U.S., the SEC’s proposed climate-related disclosure rules, although contested, signal growing convergence between ESG and financial materiality.  Boards, and particularly their chairs, can no longer afford to treat sustainability as an “externality” managed by consultants. They must take direct ownership of ESG oversight and future-proofing.  Private Equity: Positioned to Lead, or to Lag  If this is a governance reset, private equity has a competitive advantage—if it chooses to use it.  Unlike listed companies constrained by diffuse shareholding, PE-backed businesses are governed by tightly aligned boards with short chains of command and long-term planning horizons. This structural clarity should, in theory, make them ideal platforms for ESG integration.  Consider KKR’s Green Portfolio Program, which embedded environmental efficiency practices into 27 portfolio companies, yielding more than $1.2 billion in cost savings while delivering measurable improvements in resource usage. The takeaway is clear: sustainability can drive operational alpha.  But beyond operational gains lies reputational capital. Firms with demonstrable ESG performance are increasingly winning the most attractive bids, gaining regulatory goodwill, and attracting premium buyers at exit. In a world where margin compression and geopolitical uncertainty loom large, sustainability offers something rare: strategic upside with defensive value.  What Conscious Boards Actually Do  Moving from compliance to consciousness does not mean adopting a moral posture. It means developing a deeper, more systemic awareness of the forces shaping risk, value, and legitimacy. Conscious boards embed this thinking into their processes. Five actions distinguish them:  Redefining Materiality They expand beyond traditional financial risk to include upstream ecological stress, labour conditions, and emerging regulatory frameworks, well before they become liabilities.  Diversifying Expertise They bring domain-specific knowledge into the boardroom, whether in environmental systems, supply chain resilience, or digital ethics and avoid groupthink driven by finance-only profiles.  Integrating Long-Term Strategy They view climate and social instability as long-horizon risks that affect valuation at exit and beyond, and they design incentive structures to match that horizon.  Rewiring Executive Accountability They tie CEO and C-suite compensation to ESG performance metrics, not just adjusted EBITDA, making sustainability a matter of leadership credibility.  Engaging Broader Stakeholders They recognise that employees, communities, and regulators are not “external actors” but influence licence to operate, reputational stability, and future deal access.  The PE chair’s playbook: Rethinking governance at the top  For a PE chairman, the challenge is now one of vision and discipline. The firm’s value creation plan must be matched by a governance plan that reflects the new realities of risk and reputation. This does not mean abandoning the principles of high-performance capitalism. It means upgrading them.  Firms must be proactive in asking:  Do our portfolio boards have ESG-literate directors?  Are we monitoring litigation and regulatory exposure beyond national borders?  Are ESG concerns embedded in our value creation plans, or tacked on in the final year before exit?  Can we credibly defend our strategy if challenged by an LP, regulator, or any stakeholder?  The Opportunity Ahead  The boards that embrace this shift will enjoy three key advantages: access to capital from forward-looking LPs, higher exit valuations through operational and reputational premiums, and a lower long-term risk profile in an increasingly volatile operating environment.  At the International Centre for Sustainability, we believe that this decade will define the next generation of boardroom leadership. Governance is no

Author: sachin nandha, trustee and director On 25th April at around 2:50pm, a clear afternoon, in the meadows of Pahalgam—a town long associated with Kashmir’s serene beauty and emerging peace—terror struck with ruthless precision. The attack was not random. It was a deliberate assault on the fragile but real gains that Kashmir, and India more broadly, have painstakingly nurtured over the past decade. See Understanding Kashmir post 370. Beyond the immediate tragedy, the Pahalgam attack compels us to ask deeper questions: How must India’s security architecture evolve to meet the demands of an era defined by hybrid threats, proxy warfare, and disinformation? And more fundamentally, how must India’s society renew its long-term commitment to resilience—not just in tactical terms, but as a civilisational imperative? Pahalgam: More Than a Town, A Symbol Pahalgam has, over recent years, become emblematic of a new narrative in Kashmir: one of reconciliation, tourism, and quiet normalcy. Visitors flocked to its valleys, hospitality flourished, and the region began to shed the heavy legacy of insurgency and militarisation. Striking Pahalgam, therefore, was more than an act of terror—it was an attack on the very idea that Kashmir could move beyond cycles of fear. It was designed to reignite trauma, to destabilise confidence, and to fracture India’s carefully woven fabric of recovery. Understanding this symbolic dimension is essential. Security is not just about preventing physical attacks. It is about safeguarding progress itself. A Response Marked by Professionalism It is important to note that the immediate security response to the Pahalgam attack was commendable.  Coordination between agencies was swift, professional, and effective demonstrating that many structural reforms implemented over the past decade have matured into real operational capacity. Even critical observers across political lines have acknowledged the absence of major lapses in either intelligence response or tactical execution. In this specific case, it is perhaps more accurate to describe the operational environment as an intelligence black area:Signals were sparse, patterns were diffuse, and no significant early-warning indicators were available. Thus, while there was no actionable failure, the event reaffirms the need for continual enhancement of India’s intelligence synthesis capabilities—especially in challenging terrains where information gaps persist. Strengthening the Foundations for the Future Building on these gains, India must continue strengthening its security architecture—not as a criticism of what was lacking at Pahalgam, but as a proactive investment in future resilience. First, institutional coordination must be permanently embedded. The establishment of a Unified Security Command at the regional level ensures that in more complex, multi-site scenarios, the clarity of command remains robust. Second, intelligence must be fused, not just collected. Regional Intelligence Fusion Centres, integrating inputs from human, technical, and local sources in real time, can better address intelligence black spaces—especially in an era where adversaries are innovating faster than traditional structures can adapt. Third, strategic vigilance must be redundant but discreet. In Kashmir today, security is increasingly invisible by design—a sign of success, not weakness. Maintaining layers of unseen resilience—through surveillance technologies, predictive analysis, and rapid response forces—ensures that normal life can flourish without overt securitisation. The Cross-Border Reality: Old Tactics, Evolving Strategies The persistence of cross-border terror infrastructures is a reality India cannot ignore.  Groups operating from Pakistani territory, often with varying degrees of state support or tacit complicity, continue to act as force multipliers for instability. While India’s international diplomatic efforts to expose and isolate such tactics are important, the primary lesson is clear: self-reliance is paramount. After the Uri attack in 2016, India’s doctrinal shift toward surgical strikes and proactive countermeasures demonstrated that deterrence can and must be enforced when necessary.The Balakot air strikes of 2019 further expanded India’s willingness to act beyond its borders to defend national security. Pahalgam reaffirms this trajectory. A sustainable security strategy must retain full-spectrum deterrence capabilities—including covert disruption, strategic messaging, economic countermeasures, and calibrated kinetic options. Hybrid Warfare: Securing the Physical and the Psychological The Pahalgam attack was not confined to the physical realm. Within hours, manipulated videos, false flag narratives, and communal polarization efforts began to circulate across social media platforms.  This is the signature of hybrid warfare:The blending of physical attacks with psychological operations to fragment, disorient, and weaken societies from within. India’s security doctrine must now formally treat strategic communications, information security, and societal resilience as critical domains of national defence. Dedicated information command units, real-time media monitoring cells, and partnerships with civil society actors must become the norm, not the exception. India must not only defeat attacks on its borders. It must also defend truth itself. Technology, Human Capital, and Sustainable Security India has rightly invested heavily in security technology, from AI surveillance to smart fencing and sensor networks. However, one key insight from global military practice must be emphasised: Technology must augment high-quality human capital, not substitute for it. In Western military models, technological investments build upon strong human analytic and operational capacities. For India to fully realise the dividends of its technological investments, parallel investments must be made in training, leadership development, and systemic human capital uplift across security forces. Only when people and technology evolve together can true operational transformation occur. Global Context: A Broader Trend What India faces is not unique. The use of disinformation alongside kinetic action is now a staple of global conflicts—from the Ukraine-Russia war to operations in the Middle East. This underscores another vital point: India’s experience, and India’s innovations in hybrid defence, will have global relevance. As India’s geopolitical stature rises, so too will the necessity of sharing best practices, building resilience networks, and shaping global norms for hybrid conflict response. In that sense, India’s fight is part of a broader human struggle—to defend open societies against forces that seek to corrode them from within. Toward a Sustainable Security Strategy From Pahalgam, several imperatives emerge clearly: Operationalise Unified Commands: Seamless, multi-agency coordination must be built into daily operations. Create Regional Intelligence Fusion Centres: Actionable intelligence must move rapidly to prevent, not just respond to, attacks. Maintain Strategic Vigilance: Invisible but constant layers of security must protect