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BY ADELINE ANTHONY ALPHONSO
FOR many smaller businesses, ESG can sound like another layer of reporting, another set of requirements and another expense to absorb. Dr Ben Ong wants them to look at it differently. The founder and chairman of the Malaysian Association of Public Advocacy for Nature( MAPAN) sees ESG not simply as a sustainability exercise, but as a way for businesses to examine how they use resources, manage people, control costs and prepare for changes in the market.
His own route into ESG came through areas that may initially appear separate from sustainability: technology, supply chains and business management.
" ESG as a whole is all-encompassing," he said.
" Technology can help businesses reduce their carbon footprint, while supply chains are closely tied to Scope 3 emissions. Business management, meanwhile, must increasingly consider an operating environment shaped by climate change."
He believes decarbonisation now sits at the centre of the conversation.
Ben said: " If we can manage a supply chain properly, it literally means we also, along the way, reduce carbon ".
That thinking has guided MAPAN ' s approach since its incorporation in 2022.
GROWING THE BUSINESS
MAPAN focuses particularly on micro, small and medium enterprises( MSMEs), which Ben believes need practical support to make ESG adoption more accessible.
The organisation aims to act as a professional ESG knowledge hub, offering services including ESG training, carbon accounting, report writ-
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MAKING IT
PRACTICAL: Dr Ben Ong believes the push to make
ESG easier for smaller businesses is changing how companies approach sustainability.
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ing, materiality assessment, scenario planning and carbon reduction.
But rather than asking smaller businesses to learn an entirely new system from scratch, MAPAN starts with something they already understand: their financial accounts.
" ESG is a non-financial report. So, the starting point has to be that they must go back to financial statements, which every business is familiar with," he explained.
The comparison is straightforward; financial statements measure business activity in ringgit, while ESG reporting can translate activities such as electricity and water consumption into carbon measurements.
Ben believes that connection can make the subject less abstract for businesses.
The key, he said, was understanding that " carbon is a currency ".
If reducing carbon also reduces the cost of operating a business, ESG gains direct commercial relevance. It can also affect a company ' s ability to retain customers and secure new business as ESG requirements increasingly enter
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supply chains. " If they are ESG compliant, it means they can get more business or retain older businesses ".
This is the shift MAPAN wants to encourage: moving from seeing ESG purely as a cost to seeing it as an opportunity to improve efficiency and resilience.
FROM SUMMIT TO THE SUPPLY CHAIN
That philosophy also shaped the MAPAN ESG Industry & Academic Summit 2026, which centred on the National Sustainability Reporting Framework( NSRF).
Ben said the summit aimed to prepare businesses for the future of sustainability reporting while examining five interconnected areas: green finance, climate disclosure, ESG innovation, supply chain integration and the circular economy.
The supply-chain connection is particularly relevant to smaller businesses.
As larger companies face increasing sustainability reporting expectations, their suppliers may also have to provide more information
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