UAE – Mubasher: The UAE currently leads the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) in terms of organisations embracing holistic sustainability strategies, according to a recent study sponsored by Emirates NBD and conducted by Sustainable Square.
In the survey including 638 organisations across 18 MENA countries, 31% of respondents, were maintaining a holistic sustainability strategy including topics related to environmental, social, and governance management.
Respondents based in the UAE claiming to have a holistic sustainability strategy topped others, accounting for 64%, the survey found.
Almost 27% of organisations have only a customer service relation (CSR) strategy that mainly focuses on social and local community topics, while 6% of organisations have only an environmental strategy, it added.
According to 21% of respondents, improving organisational reputation pushes regional firms to invest in sustainability, while 19% of respondents attributed investing in sustainability to the sense of responsibility, the survey said.
Many respondents projected that organisations’ sustainability budgets will not increase this year, while others see 2019 as a year for boosting external communications regarding their sustainability practices.
Hesham Abdulla Al Qassim, vice chairman and managing director of Emirates NBD, said: “Emirates NBD is firmly committed to embedding a culture of sustainability across its business and inculcating a shared sense of environmental and social responsibility among staff members.”
“With the launch of this new study looking into the state of sustainability and CSR in the MENA region, we hope to encourage other companies and entities to take on a more proactive role in reporting on sustainability and disclosing their ethical and responsible practices, which will help them benchmark and set regional and global standards,” Al Qassim added.
At the level of local communities, almost 16% of the participants highlighted education as their key focus, followed by environment, which was identified by 11% of the respondents as their top priority, the survey found.
Meanwhile, health and youth empowerment came in the third spot, with 9% of participants in the survey claiming both as their key focus.
Moreover, 79% of the participant organisations reported having initiatives related to managing energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across operations, 38% said to have initiatives pertaining to customers on environmental practices.
The findings also showed that 34% of respondents reported initiatives related to energy use and GHG emissions management across supply chains.
“When asked about success factors that organisations would like to implement in the future in order to boost their sustainability practices, the top factors reported were: aligning sustainability and business strategies (26%) and having mechanisms to track sustainability (26%),” the survey concluded.
