A photo of Nakilat's Al Kharaitiyat vessel.
With Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG) becoming more important globally, corporates are embedding ESG in their decision-making. Companies in Qatar are also swiftly adopting best practices in the field of ESG.
Nakilat has recently published its Environmental, Social, and Governance Report 2020, which provides a snapshot of the company’s ESG progress in the last year.
Nakilat has established an ESG Committee composed of Nakilat’s executives, of which provides regular updates to the Board of Directors, who holds overall accountability of all ESG-related matters across the Group and this committee is supported by a newly formed ESG Task-Force composed of senior professionals.
“The committee is supported by a newly formed ESG Task-Force composed of senior professionals who represent each ESG Pillar (Environment, Social, and Governance) and are responsible for the day-to-day management of Nakilat’s ESG corporate reporting activities,” noted Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Report 2020.
The committee meets regularly, at least twice a year, and is responsible for maintaining oversight of the strategies, policies and risks related to ESG topics, said the report. This encompasses all topics identified as having a material impact on the business such as climate change, CO2 emissions, energy consumption, health and safety, human capital, human rights, good corporate governance and community engagement.
The ESG Task-Force meets minimum every month to drive continuous improvement of ESG matters, disclosure, and developments, and reports monthly to the ESG Committee. Nakilat’s ESG strategy and approach was developed following extensive consultation with key internal and external stakeholders.
These include customers, investors, shareholders, employees, regulators, suppliers, students, community members, and government entities.
Nakilat undertakes a periodic evidence-based review of its material ESG topics in accordance with the GRI standards. This entails industry analysis, peer benchmarking, external stakeholder surveys, and internal validation by the ESG Committee.
“On a yearly basis, we engage through a wide range of methods with all our stakeholders to capture ESG risks and priority topics. This includes shareholders, investors, suppliers, JV partners, charterers, classification societies, employees, ESG specialists and ESG rating agencies etc,” noted the report.
As part of the identification of key ESG risks and opportunities, Nakilat engages transparently and through open communication with internal and external stakeholders. Through this dialogue we assess and map the relevance of ESG topics impacting our business and wider society.
This approach enables us to identify those topics of most importance to our stakeholders and forms the basis for the development of Nakilat’s non-financial ESG report and disclosures, said the report.
The prioritization also helps inform the evolution of Nakilat’s ESG strategy and level of ambition in certain topics. Following extensive industry benchmarking, analysis of select international ESG rating agencies and assessment of stakeholder surveys, the generated Nakilat ESG materiality matrix plots the company’s priority topics against the degree of stakeholder importance, and the significance of impact on Nakilat’s business.
