Businesses today are finding that their network of partners, suppliers, customers and stakeholders increasingly expect an ESG strategy to be in place – and rural enterprises are no exception. If you haven’t been asked about your ESG credentials yet, the chances are you soon will be.

The three pillars

ESG – often used interchangeably with sustainability, though it's not necessarily the same thing – stands for the three pillars of environment, social, and governance.

In short, a strategy will consider the environmental impact of your products and services: could you, for example, be embracing video conferencing, recycling more, or enhancing the stewardship of land and wildlife?

Social is harder to measure but speaks to how a business adds value to the community and shares values with its customers. Get the E and S right and G should follow.

At its most basic, governance is about demonstrating that a company’s actions are ethical and can be trusted.

From the top

Writing a successful ESG strategy can’t be outsourced as the vision needs to come from the top; from those people who are making the all-important investment decisions.

We recommend starting by establishing who is interested, be it the local community, any tenants or tenant farmers, or the local water company, for example. There could be a huge range of stakeholders with a view on your performance. These conversations might sound daunting but it’s necessary to work out what a business can influence, measure and manage.

Then it’s a question of pinning down where the business is going, what matters to it and its supply chain, where the strengths and weaknesses are when it comes to core sustainability drivers, and how data will be collected and assessed.

What’s really important is making sure that the strategy is manageable and meaningful, to ensure that it adds value to the business rather than adding bureaucracy.

Review

And then, of course, there’s the matter of measuring progress which can be challenging. However, baseline surveys and audits will help give an understanding of where the opportunities may lie.

• For more information on drawing up an ESG strategy as well as more rural news, see the latest edition of Aspects of Land

Further information

Contact Katie Stein

Contact Savills Rural