Correlation of different providers' ESG scores in 2017, by issue

According to an academic study conducted in 2020, six of the major environmental, social and governance (ESG) ratings agencies differ greatly in how they treat different underlying ESG issues when determining their ESG scores. From an analysis of the ESG frameworks of Sustainalytics, Vigeo, RobecoSAM, Asset4 and MSCI, can be seen that while there is a fairly strong overlap in how some issues are treated (such as the membership in Global Compacts), other issues are subject to a great divergence (or excluded altogether). For example, there is very little overlap in how the providers treat issues such as indigenous rights, lobbying and taxation, which had correlations of -0.22, -0.07 and 0.1 respectively. In addition, as of 2017 none of the providers addressed the following issues in their ESG frameworks: child labor, recycling, unions, packaging, and forests.