The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, also known as the 2030 Agenda, aim globally at sustainable development that safeguards people’s well-being and human rights, economic prosperity and the stability of societies in an environmentally sustainable manner. Furthermore, the objective is to eradicate extreme poverty in all its forms. Veritas can influence, support and contribute to the achievement of these goals through its own activities.
Four of the goals have been selected as pivotal from Veritas’ point of view and these are:
Good health and well-being
Goal 3: To ensure a healthy life and well-being to people of all ages.
We support our customers in managing work ability risks and want to promote the healthy life and well-being of people of all ages. We are working continuously in an effort to ensure the actualisation of a good employee experience. We take care of our employees through providing them, for instance, with a comprehensive occupational healthcare plan, equal family leave possibilities, recreational and wellbeing benefits as well as flexibility at different stages of working life. Through these means we also promote the mental health and wellbeing of our employees.
Decent work and economic growth
Goal 8: Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all.
We are a responsible employer and we promote employment through offering high-quality employment in safe working environments. We regularly review the salaries of our personnel to ensure there are no inexplicable salary differences. We maintain economic growth and do so through increasingly sustainable means. We also review our choices from the environmental perspective.
Sustainable cities and communities
Goal 11: Make cities and human settlements safe and sustainable.
As a real estate investor, we seek to ensure the safety and sustainability of cities and communities through designing and building sustainable real estate. We have devised responsibility guidelines for construction, with which we require all of the contractors and co-operation partners participating in projects to adhere to. We consider environmental impacts already at the development phase as concerns, for instance, emission measurements, waste sorting and recycling, energy efficiency and material choices. Veritas has acceded to the real estate industry energy efficiency treaty and we have set climate goals for our real estate investments. Further details concerning responsibility in real estate.
Climate action
Goal 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.
We are continuously developing our own operations towards a more sustainable direction in order to mitigate our climate and environmental impacts. We monitor the climate impacts of our investment portfolio and reduce its carbon intensity. We are aiming for a carbon-neutral investment portfolio by 2035. Our long-term target is for our investments to be aligned with the Paris Agreement. This year, we reached one significant milestone when all Veritas properties became powered by renewable energy. This served to reduce the amount of our emissions and mitigate the ensuing adverse climate impacts. We are also involved in CDP’s Non-Disclosure Campaign initiative, which encourages companies to report on the impacts of climate change. We increase our personnel’s awareness of the climate and environmental impacts of our operations through internal communication. We have also assessed the risks and impacts of climate change on our operations so as to be able to prepare for same.