Proponents have filed at least 527 shareholder resolutions on environmental, social and related sustainable governance issues for the 2024 proxy season. This is down by only a few from 536 last year at the same time. It still seems possible the total will reach 630, as it did in both 2023 and 2022.

Support levels have fallen substantially on average in the last two years, largely because the biggest asset managers have stopped supporting as many proposals. Some of the chill clearly comes from attacks on the use of investment strategies that consider social and environmental matters in business, underscored by related litigation that is testing out novel legal theories that could upend shareholder rights and decades of investor engagement. Some also comes from the types of resolutions filed, as well as the context of a surging U.S. economy and fallout from global conflicts that has pushed energy prices higher. Proposals that favor changes that would strengthen corporate approaches to societal responsibility continued to drop but are still earning far more than those that oppose such efforts by a wide margin; the pro-ESG average fell to 21.5 percent last year, down from an apex of 33.3 percent in 2021. The relatively small number of anti-ESG proposals gained no traction, though, and last year saw their already low average fall to only 2.5 percent.

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