This is why we're trying to encourage a collaborative industry conversation between asset managers and asset owners on research budgets because both parties want the manager's investment product to succeed. We wrote about this a couple of years ago with Stanford:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3209952

We've developed an ESG Framework for Asset Manager - Asset Owner Research Collaboration which may be the way forward for the industry. Both parties agree on the importance of "sustainability"