Sustainability doesn’t just matter, it’s the future.

I’ve been grinding away in the world of sustainability for nearly 20 years, going from the difficult voice in the corner to a central role that can underpin our built environment. In the last 10 years the industry has transformed, grappling with the scale of the climate change and the impact that construction has on our global future. But with the rise of populist politics, it might seem that it’s unravelling on the surface, but the fundamental ground swell is still there and it’s business as usual in many respects despite the change in mood music.

I got involved with sustainability not because I like counting carbon emissions, or researching supply chains, or having heated discussions in design team meetings, but because I cared deeply about our future. And it is our future at stake, not just mine, or my family and friends, but all of us, including those that actively work against sustainability principles.

So why does ESG matter in the world of investment?

It’s about resilience for the future. We’re in an industry that is creating a product for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Our buildings will last over 60 years, maybe 120 years, during which time they may be transferred multiple times, from the initial developer through different portfolios. But we’re typically locked into thinking about our buildings in the short term, in the next 3-7 years due to investor capital cycles, while dealing with the immediate transitional risks from shifting politics and policy in that time frame.

By thinking in short cycles, we overlook the physical risk to our buildings. Extreme weather has increased by a factor of five over the last 50 years and shows no sign of stabilising. Heat-waves are stressing our homes to breaking point. Increased flip-flopping from drought to floods is overwhelming local infrastructure, creating costly damage to our homes, businesses, and transport networks. All of this takes a toll on our built environment and the financial infrastructure that underpins it.

It’s time to start thinking of our buildings within the wider system, as a way to increase the resilience within society. Our supply chains should support jobs that have a long-term future, moving away from materials that are under-pressure, to abundant materials that can create the low-cost buildings of the future. By creating the jobs of the future, we create the liquidity of the future, the demand and financing for our future projects. These will be the people that need a new office and a new home, creating a broader and wealthier market for our future investments. It’s not just today’s investment, it’s creating the future market that we work in. By laying the groundwork now, we make our future investments easier.

People are the foundation of every building we create. The people that live and work in them. The people who design and build them. The people who manufacture the products we build with. Without these people, their time, knowledge, and money, the built environment as an investment collapses. ESG isn’t about counting carbon, or achieving gold stars, it’s about creating the future for these people to prosper. We need to create the industries that use abundant, cheap materials, that are renewable or waste streams.

We insulate our communities from tariffs and trade disputes through finding and supporting local supply chains, increasing certainty in their future, and unlocking additional investment potential.

We design our buildings to be low carbon, avoiding the worst of the extreme temperatures and the global instability that it will unleash, reducing the geopolitical risks it will bring.

We design neighbourhoods to be resilient to any future climate change, surviving the extreme weather of flooding/drought/storms/extreme heat, and the strain they put on the insurance sector. But also creating a resilient financial as well as physical future for those buildings in whatever future market conditions prevail.

We use system thinking to identify ways to not only reduce the impact of our investments, but also ways to make things better, generating abundance for the whole supply chain.

So yes, ESG is about carbon counting and golden stars, but it’s so much more than that. It's about taking the initiative and creating the future that we want. An equitable future that opens the market to everyone, creating a lower risk environment that supports long-term thinking that benefits us all.

If you want to reduce the risk of your investments, start the groundwork now and begin building the future we all need.