The United Nations Climate Conference (COP30), which opens this Monday in Belém, begins with a diplomatic irony. The host of the summit, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, left Pará shortly after meeting with world leaders and flew to Colombia on a solidarity visit to Venezuela — a nation rich in oil, under sanctions, and once again facing threats of U.S. intervention. The gesture captures a new phase in the sustainability debate: climate is no longer just environmental; it is also economic, strategic, and geopolitical. Out of this fusion comes ESG² — an evolution of the traditional Environmental, Social and Governance framework that now includes Economics, Security and Geopolitics.
Created in the 2000s, ESG was designed to measure corporate responsibility across environmental, social and governance pillars. For a while, that seemed enough. But the world changed. Wars, pandemics and energy crises revealed that sustainability depends on much more than cutting emissions or publishing annual reports. Today, the price of energy, access to food and global security affect stability as much as rising temperatures. This shift — from climate idealism to geopolitical realism — is what ESG² seeks to describe.
The term began to circulate in late 2023, appearing in risk reports and academic studies on energy security and supply chains. European and American think tanks started referring to Security-ESG (SESG) and Geo-ESG, while asset managers adopted the label ESG² — ESG “to the second power.” For these analysts, the logic is clear: there can be no sustainability without resilience, and no resilience without accounting for economics, security and geopolitics as part of the same equation.
Lula’s trip embodies this turning point. While Belém hosts discussions on forests, biodiversity and carbon, the Brazilian president is balancing environmental diplomacy with regional realpolitik. By visiting Colombia and extending support to Venezuela, Lula signals that Brazil aims to play a leading role in both the green agenda and the geopolitics of Latin America — and that climate policy now inevitably runs through the geopolitics of oil. The message is that the E for Economics, the S for Security, and the G for Geopolitics have become inseparable from the environmental debate.
Still, the expanded framework carries risks. By trying to cover everything, ESG² could become so elastic that it loses meaning. Companies and governments might use the new label to justify contradictions — such as invoking security to expand fossil fuel investments or delaying climate targets on economic grounds. The ESG² agenda will only be useful if it helps integrate, rather than replace, the urgency of environmental action.
Hosting COP30 while projecting regional influence places Brazil at the center of the debate over what “sustainability” really means in a world in transition. Pragmatically, ESG² starts from a simple recognition: sustainability and development still move together. Environmental preservation depends on the energy that powers economies, the industries that create jobs, and the political stability that prevents collapse. The challenge — and the opportunity — for Brazil is to show that it can bridge both worlds.