Board and Governance Responsibilities for Sustainability and ESG

About this course.

ESG stands for environmental, social and governance — the three broad dimensions through which a business's sustainability and its wider impacts and risks are commonly assessed, alongside its financial performance. Corporate sustainability governance is the system by which a company directs and controls how it manages those dimensions: the roles, structures, policies, oversight and accountability that ensure sustainability is actually run properly rather than merely talked about. For a construction or property business, ESG and its governance are not an add-on or a public-relations exercise; they concern real risks and opportunities — from the safety and treatment of people, to environmental compliance and climate exposure, to the integrity of the business's own decision-making — that bear directly on its performance, reputation, access to work and finance, and its legal position.

The environmental (E) dimension covers a business's effect on and exposure to the natural world: energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, the carbon embodied in materials, waste and the circular use of resources, water, pollution and contamination, biodiversity and land, and the physical and transition risks associated with a changing climate. For construction and property this is a large surface area, because the sector is resource- and emissions-intensive and its assets are long-lived and exposed to the physical environment.