Boards can expect to feel the effects of the ESG and DEI backlash this year, a new report from the Conference Board predicts. The number of anti-ESG shareholder proposals among Russell 3000 companies nearly quadrupled between 2021 and 2024, research by the Conference Board and partner organizations found. In 2024, 112 anti-ESG proposals were filed, versus 23 in 2021.

The percentage of anti-ESG proposals, however, has remained steady, at around 13% in both 2023 and 2024. That’s because the overall number of proposals increased over that time.

Meanwhile, around the same number of pro-climate proposals were filed in 2023 and 2024. Support for those proposals is down slightly, from 21% to 19%. And it’s far below the 41% support environmental proposals enjoyed in 2021.

Anti-DEI proposals rise as well: The number of anti-DEI proposals remains small, but is growing: Thirteen anti-DEI proposals were filed in 2024, compared with just 1 in 2021. But support for such proposals is very low, typically hovering around 1.7%.

The Conference Board predicts that investors will continue to see many such anti-ESG and anti-DEI proposals in 2025, given the current political climate.

For more on the rise of anti-ESG boards proposals, click here.—CV

The sustainability landscape is an uncertain one for US business leaders right now. The long-awaited SEC climate rule was softened, then put on pause altogether. Activist investors are ramping up anti-ESG proposals. The federal government has taken a sharp turn toward deregulation. And the EU has proposed changes to the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), which could affect US entities that do a significant amount of business there.

At the GreenBiz25 corporate sustainability conference, Maura Hodge, US sustainability leader at KPMG, spoke with CFO Brew about how she’s advising clients to proceed in the face of this ambiguity.

What have you been hearing about the future of the SEC climate rule?

SEC commissioners have said they’re not going to defend the rule. Honestly, when it came out in March, we said, “This doesn’t have a lot of teeth anymore.” There was still the financial statement component, but it was still pretty small, and everything else is stuff most companies were doing already anyway. In April [we decided] we’re not going to focus on the SEC rule any more, because now it’s being contested.

Should US companies be doing anything different in regard to sustainability, given the political climate right now?

What we are seeing is a change in language. We went through that change last year from ESG to sustainability…[What] we’ve always said is, it makes good business sense, it creates value for the organization…

Click here to keep reading about navigating sustainability in uncertain times.—CV

KPMG has become the latest Big Four firm to roll back its DEI commitments. According to the Financial Times, CEO Paul Knopp sent an email to KPMG employees saying it would end DEI initiatives like its Accelerate 2025 program, which, the FT wrote, “aimed to have half of its partners and managing directors from under-represented groups by this year.”

“The legal landscape surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts has been shifting, via executive orders and in the courts,” Knopp wrote in the email. KPMG is a federal contractor that received $503 million in fees in fiscal year 2024, per Bloomberg Law.

The status of the Trump administration’s DEI-related executive orders is in limbo. A federal court temporarily blocked some provisions of the orders from being enacted, including requirements that “contractors and grant recipients...certify that they do not engage in any ‘equity-related’ programs.”

Data deleted: Three of the Big Four accounting firms have removed DEI data from their websites or otherwise hidden it. KPMG scrubbed years’ worth of transparency reports about its DEI initiatives from its website, and its DEI page has been replaced by one on careers and culture.

For more on the Big Four’s pullback from DEI, click here.—CV

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