Books by
Shaurya Ritwik

Something is broken in the architecture of sustainability, and it is not the intentions behind it. ESG assets run into the trillions. Net-zero pledges cover the majority of the global economy. Climate disclosure has become a boardroom imperative. The physical numbers — emissions, biodiversity loss, climate vulnerability — continue moving in the wrong direction.

Shaurya Ritwik argues this is not a coincidence. It is a design outcome.

Sustainability has built its own internal economy, one where institutions are rewarded for producing the right signals — disclosures, ratings, pledges, frameworks — regardless of what those signals actually deliver. Capital follows the signal. Governance tracks the signal. The outcome goes largely unmeasured, and largely unchanged.

Grounded in the structural realities of Asian markets and the institutional constraints of the Global South, the book offers original analytical frameworks for diagnosing where sustainability governance breaks down, identifying who bears the structural costs of misalignment, and determining what institutional change would actually move the needle.

This is not a book about bad actors or weak ambition. It is a book about systems functioning exactly as designed, and why that is precisely the problem. For policymakers, investors, regulators, and practitioners, it offers what most books in this space do not: a structural diagnosis and a credible path forward.