Environmental, social and governance principles in airports: Drivers, pushback and a way forward

This paper describes the origins of environmental, social and governance (ESG) in compliance and brand building, and its evolution into a topic of significant strategic importance to airports owing to the stakeholders driving it forward: finance, government, employees and the airport organisational ecosystem. The paper describes factors acting to resist the growth of the ESG trend, while underscoring the importance of ESG as a risk management tool and a way to maintain the airport’s social licence to operate. It describes the approach that Vantage Group has employed to address ESG at its airports, including establishing an indicator framework drawing on widely accepted standards, gathering data to establish a baseline for those indicators, setting goals and embarking on a journey of continuous improvement to enhance ESG performance.