Skanska: Natural and social capital part of wider Accounting for Sustainability strategy
Skanska’s implementation of the Natural Capital Protocol (NCP) is part of its wider “Accounting for Sustainability” strategy. The overarching goal of the strategy is to integrate social and natural capital into decision-making alongside financial capital. Ultimately, the intention is to use the results to inform strategic decisions that enable the company to fulfil its purpose to build for a better society. This includes decisions at corporate and project levels that can encourage investment in sustainability activities and aid communicating their benefits to key stakeholders.
There were a number of specific value drivers for the approach, including:
- Fulfilling Skanska’s purpose, values and strategic plan
- Demonstrating the company’s value to society
- Supporting better decision-making
- Understanding wider risks and opportunities
- Helping Skanska’s customers understand their impacts and make better decisions
- Yes
- Biodiversity & Ecosystem Services
- Climate & Air Emissions
- Waste Management
- Water
- Corporate
- Project
- Monetary
- Qualitative
- Quantitative
- Value to society
- United Kingdom
- Direct operations
- Construction and Real Estate
Key findings
Implementing the NCP has helped us realize a number of key benefits and findings, including:
- Providing an overview of business impacts on natural capital and highlighting areas where suitable metrics were not in place, such as metrics for measuring biodiversity.
- Highlighting the need to understand environmental data collection and reporting more comprehensively to make a shift towards using data to aid better decision-making.
- Providing a structured foundation for constructive discussions between different business areas, particularly between teams which were typically less connected, such as Environment and Finance.
- Improving awareness of the concept of non-financial measurement and valuation among internal stakeholders, including senior management.
More information
Skanska’s work around natural capital sits alongside social capital and forms part of a wider Accounting for Sustainability strategy.
A case study on Skanska’s work on social capital is available at SocialCapital.org.
For more information on Skanska’s work on biodiversity and natural capital, visit the Skanska.co.uk website, or contract Lizzie.Rendell@skanska.co.uk.