SESG Methodology

The SESG index is a country-level Sovereign ESG score built from environmental, social, and governance indicators.

Source data acknowledgement

The underlying indicator panel and country metadata used in this SESG dashboard are compiled by the Sovereign ESG Data Portal team. The source workbook brings together the indicators available on the World Bank Sovereign ESG Data Portal, including the core ESG Framework indicators and supplementary datasets such as Country Key Statistics and Wealth Accounting data. The source workbook contains three relevant sheets: Framework for ESG Framework indicator descriptions, Metadata for country metadata including ISO3 codes, geographic regions, income groups and Köppen climate groups, and Data for panel time-series values by country and indicator.

Source website: https://esgdata.worldbank.org
Source contact: esgdata@worldbank.org
Source data overview supplied with the workbook: 214 countries/economies, 195 indicators, 1960–2025.

Income and regional classifications in the source file follow the World Bank Country and Lending Groups classification as of May 2026. Climate classifications are drawn from the current Köppen–Geiger climate system. Both classifications may change over time.

This SESG dashboard, entropy-weighted scores, normalized values, weights, rankings, custom calculations and visualizations are a derived research product prepared by Olayeni Olaolu Richard (2026). They should not be interpreted as an official World Bank composite index or as an official score produced by the Sovereign ESG Data Portal team.

Indicator structure

The official v1.0 pipeline uses this hierarchy:

Indicator → Group → Pillar → SESG

The three pillars are:

Environment
Social
Governance

Country metadata

Country metadata are merged from countries.csv using country_iso3. The dashboard supports filtering by:

region
region_code
income_group
income_group_code
climate_classification

Indicator direction

Each indicator is classified as:

positive: higher is better
negative: higher is worse
target: best near a target
context: published but excluded from official score

Normalization

For positive indicators:

p_itk = (x_itk - min_k) / (max_k - min_k)

For negative indicators:

p_itk = (max_k - x_itk) / (max_k - min_k)

The min and max are computed across all available country-year observations in the official data release. Dashboard filters do not change official normalization.

Entropy weighting

For each normalized official indicator:

s_itk = p_itk / Σ_i Σ_t p_itk

e_k = -1 / ln(q) × Σ_i Σ_t s_itk ln(s_itk)

d_k = 1 - e_k

w_k = d_k / Σ_k d_k

The term 0 × ln(0) is handled by excluding zero shares from the entropy summation.

Official aggregation

The official score uses hierarchical entropy weighting:

1. Entropy weights are computed within each SESG group.
2. Indicator scores are aggregated into group scores.
3. Groups are equally weighted within each pillar.
4. Pillars are equally weighted in the overall SESG score.

For v1.0:

SESG = 1/3 × Environment + 1/3 × Social + 1/3 × Governance

Missing data

Missing values are not treated as zero. Weights are renormalized over available values, and coverage fields are published for group, pillar, and overall scores.

Coverage flags:

good: coverage >= 0.80
moderate: 0.60 <= coverage < 0.80
low: coverage < 0.60

Official versus custom scores

The official SESG score is precomputed and versioned. The Custom SESG Builder creates user-defined results and parameter files for exploratory research; custom results are not official SESG rankings.