Decolonising ESG: How Indigenous land stewardship redefines corporate accountability beyond extractive metrics
Original framing: “Integrating traditional custodianship of land into ESG reporting and rating” — bing news
Indigenous communities in Zimbabwe and globally are leading resistance against ESG frameworks that co-opt their knowledge without consent or compensation. Women, who often hold traditional ecological knowledge, are disproportionately excluded from ESG decision-making processes. The marginalisation of these voices reinforces colonial power structures, where Indigenous knowledge is extracted but not reciprocated.
The original headline frames Indigenous custodianship as a 'tool' for corporate compliance, obscuring the centuries-old systems of reciprocity that have sustained Zimbabwe’s landscapes long before ESG existed.
This erasure is not accidental but structural, reflecting a global pattern where colonial land tenure regimes persist under the guise of 'sustainability', with ESG acting as their latest iteration. Indigenous knowledge, from *pfumvudza* agriculture to sacred land ethics, offers a blueprint for regenerative governance, yet corporations treat it as a checkbox rather than a paradigm shift. The solution lies in decolonising ESG through co-designed metrics, legal safeguards like FPIC, and redirecting capital to Indigenous-led restoration—models already proven in Aotearoa New Zealand and other Indigenous-led economies. Without these changes, ESG will remain a tool of greenwashing, reinforcing the very extractivism it claims to combat. The trickster’s laughter reminds us that the absurdity of corporate 'sustainability' is only funny until we realise it’s costing lives and ecosystems their futures.