The ESG Implementation Paradox

This thesis investigates the ESG Implementation Paradox, a structural phenomenon where the regulatory frameworks designed by the Global North to mandate sustainability inadvertently guarantee the economic exclusion of the Global South. As Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) metrics become the dominant language of global capital, a critical friction has emerged between the highly capitalized, digitized demands of the Core (the EU, US, and China) and the informal, agrarian realities of the Periphery. Utilizing a trans-scalar, mixed methods approach grounded in Wallerstein’s World-Systems Theory, this research analyses the mechanisms of Regulatory Imperialism and Green Colonialism. Through a series of forensic case studies including the Digital Wall facing Ethiopian coffee smallholders, Audit Fatigue in Bangladeshi garment manufacturing, and Liability Washing in the Niger Delta. This study proves that current ESG architectures prioritize Procedural Compliance over material planetary health. The findings reveal that the standardization of sustainability functions as an Exclusion Paradox. When Northern regulators mandate sub meter geolocation polygons and redundant social audits, they establish a digital and financial barrier that informal producers cannot scale. Therefore, these producers are banished from global markets not for environmental degradation, but for Procedural Incompliance. Simultaneously, multinational corporations utilize Isomorphic Mimicry and the ideological split between Single and Double Materiality to clean their balance sheets through the divestment of pollutive assets, effectively exporting ecological liabilities to undercapitalized domestic operators in the South. The thesis concludes by arguing that the global Green Transition is currently operating as a regressive tax on the poor, tapping capital into a Northern based Certification Economy. To fix this paradox, I propose a shift toward a Pluriversal ESG Model a decentralized framework that socializes compliance costs, recognizes customary land tenure, and enforces a Cradle to Grave liability standard. Only by centering the lived material realities of the Global South can ESG transition from a neo-colonial weapon into a legitimate tool for global equity. Keywords: ESG Exclusion Paradox, Regulatory Imperialism, Green Colonialism, Ethiopia, Digital Wall, Liability Washing, World-Systems Theory, Double Materiality.