LE3: ESG Objectives – Above Green

(3.55 points)

Intent

Clear Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) objectives help participants identify material issues and integrate them into overall day-to-day management practices. Integrating ESG practices into the overall business strategy fosters alignment between management of sustainability issues and the overall strategy of the entity. Having clear ESG objectives also demonstrates commitment to monitoring and improving ESG performance.

Requirements

Select Yes or No: If selecting Yes, select applicable sub-options.

Does the entity have specific ESG objectives?

Yes
- The objectives relate to: (multiple answers possible)
  - General sustainability
  - Environment
  - Social
  - Governance
- The objectives are:
  - Publicly available [Provide applicable hyperlink or a separate publicly available document]
  - Not publicly available [Provide applicable hyperlink or a separate publicly available document]
No
- Provide additional context for the answer provided (not validated, for reporting purposes only)
  ________________________

Prefill: This indicator is similar to the one included in the 2019 Assessment and some sections have been prefilled from the 2019 Assessment. Review the response and/or evidence carefully.

Validation

Evidence: Document upload or hyperlink. The evidence should sufficiently support all the items selected for this question. If a hyperlink is provided, ensure that it is not outdated and the relevant page can be accessed within two steps.

The provided evidence should cover the following elements:

Specific, actionable ESG objective(s) that relate to each of the selected criteria (i.e. Evidence of implementation or formal adoption of the objectives).
The public availability of the objectives (if applicable).

Acceptable evidence may include illustrative portions of business plans, annual report, strategic developments, target documents, company presentations, etc.

Hyperlink: Hyperlink is mandatory for this indicator when publicly available is selected. Ensure that the hyperlink is not outdated and the relevant page can be accessed within two steps. The URL should demonstrate the existence of publicly available commitment(s) selected.

Document upload: Participants may upload several documents. When providing a document upload, it is mandatory to indicate where relevant information can be found within the document.

See Appendix 4 of the reference guide for additional information about GRESB Validation.

Scoring

This indicator is scored as a Two Section Indicator (i.e. Section 1: 'Elements' response and, Section 2: 'Evidence' response).

Section 1:Fractional points are awarded to each objective type and then aggregated to calculate the final fractional score. It is not necessary to select all checkboxes in order to obtain the maximum score for this indicator. The objectives are not all assigned equal weights.

Section 2:‘Evidence’ is mandatory for this indicator. Therefore, no points will be awarded unless the hyperlink and/or the uploaded document is considered valid, based on the evidence criteria stated above. Non-publicly available evidence will score lower. The evidence is validated which determines a multiplier, according to the table below:

Evidence: The evidence is manually validated and assigned a multiplier, according to the table below. The evidence must support the validation requirements. If any requirements are not met, the evidence may be partially accepted or not accepted depending on the level of alignment with the requirements.

Validation status	Score
Accepted	2/2
Partially accepted	1/2
Not accepted/not provided	0

Terminology

Environmental objectives: Overall environmental goals, arising from policies, that an entity sets itself to achieve. The objectives should be quantifiable and correlated with the entity’s ambition.

Formally adopted: To set and communicate a strategy/target/program, at least internally, and having implemented or prepared actions to achieve this.

General sustainability objectives: Strategic or cross-cutting objectives to improve overall ESG performance that are not specific to environmental, social or governance issues. For example, relative position on sustainability indices or rankings.

Governance objectives: Overall governance goals, arising from policies, that an entity sets itself to achieve. The objectives should be quantifiable and correlated with the entity’s ambitions.

Overall business strategy: The entity's long-term strategy for meeting its objectives.

Social objectives: Overall social goals, arising from policies, that an entity sets itself to achieve. The objectives should be quantifiable and correlated with the entity’s ambitions.

References

DISO14001: Environmental Management

UNPRI, PRI Reporting Framework, 2018