ALI remains only Philippines firm in Sustainability Yearbook

MANILA, Philippines — Ayala Land Inc. (ALI) is once again the only Philippine company included in The Sustainability Yearbook 2019 – the world’s most comprehensive publication on corporate sustainability.  This is the third consecutive year that ALI has been named one of the most sustainable companies worldwide.

The Sustainability Yearbook was established in 2004 and has since been released annually by RobecoSAM, a distinguished specialist in sustainability investing. The group’s Sustainable Asset Management (SAM) unit has been conducting its Corporate Sustainability Assessment (CSA) for 20 years now by surveying thousands of listed companies worldwide that are eligible for inclusion in the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices (DJSI).

The CSA has been a leading methodology for assessing the ESG (environment, social, governance) performance of companies, and helps investors identify companies that are strongly positioned to create long-term shareholder value.

In order to be listed in the yearbook, companies must be within the top 15 percent of their industry and must achieve a score within 30 percent of their industry’s top performing company.  ALI was the first Philippine company to be included in the sustainability index in 2014, and remains the only Philippine company in the yearbook to date.

ALI has consistently advocated sustainability and environmental conservation in all of its estates and developments through its four focus areas of site resilience, pedestrian mobility and transit connectivity, resource-efficiency, and local economic development.  It took its sustainability goals a step further in 2017 by embarking on a significant carbon emissions reduction program ain its commercial properties – becoming the first Philippine company to target carbon neutrality by 2022.

The company has already dedicated 450 hectares of land around its major commercial estates outside Metro Manila as carbon forests. These forests are carbon sinks that absorb more carbon dioxide (CO2) than they release. 

ALI’s carbon forests consist of five sites spread out around the country. Forest sites in Lio and Sicogon are integrated into the estates’ master plans as part of the developments’ nature trail areas.  The Alaminos site lies north of BellaVita subdivision, while the Kan-irag and Talomo sites are located in the cities of Cebu and Davao.

Aside from forest regeneration, ALI is employing a combination of strategies to achieve carbon neutrality including the implementation of passive cooling design, energy efficiency measures and clean energy sourcing   for its developments through power purchase agreements (PPAs).

Ayala Land has been producing comprehensive sustainability reports for several years now.  These reports track ESG metrics such as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions throughout the various stages of the project development process, and benchmark the company’s sustainability and ESG indicators with global standards.