The Evolution of Environmental, Social, and Governance ( ESG ) and Risk and Its Implications for Sustainable Finance: A Systematic Literature Review

ABSTRACT Recent literature addressing ESG and risk has increased by 70% since mid‐2022, reflecting a growing interest in sustainable finance. Guided by the PRISMA flow diagram, this paper employs a hybrid systematic review methodology, combining bibliometric analysis with content analysis, to provide a comprehensive overview of the evolution of ESG and risk within the broader sustainable finance discourse. Our findings identify sustainability as a central theme within the ESG and risk literature, with a recent shift towards governance structure and performance evaluation. Furthermore, through Latent Dirichlet Allocation‐based topic modeling, we delineate six key subtopic areas that collectively underscore ESG's role in resilience, risk management, and value creation. These findings demonstrate the importance of integrating sustainability into corporate decision‐making and highlight ESG's potential to shape sustainable finance as an evolving and dynamic field for research.