Nature and Biodiversity
Overview
The availability of natural resources and the provision of ecosystem services are essential to individual and community wellbeing and the success of the global economy. As part of S&P Global’s broader environmental strategy, we are seeking to better understand and address nature-related impacts of our operations, as well as supporting our customers and others in managing nature-related matters for their own organizations and the wider economy.
This material topic includes our efforts to understand and manage the company’s impacts and dependencies on nature, minimize natural resource consumption and mitigate other negative environmental impacts of our operations. For information on how S&P Global’s data and technology support analysis and disclosure of nature-related risks and opportunities, see Sustainability Products & Data.
Focus Areas
Identifying, assessing and reporting impacts and dependencies in alignment with the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) Framework.
Advancing progress toward net-zero water* and waste for our global offices.
*S&P Global defines net-zero water in accordance with guidelines from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Federal Energy Management Program: “A net zero water building (or campus) completely offsets water use with alternative water plus water returned to the original water source. If the building is not located within the watershed or aquifer of the original water source, then returning water to the original water source will be unlikely. In those cases, a net zero water strategy would depend on alternative water use.”
2024 Highlights
Nature-related impact risk remained low in our direct operations after expanding our Nature and Biodiversity Risk Assessment to include additional office locations and colocated data centers.
Removed single-use plastics in 13 offices.
Recycled 77% of our waste.
Our Approach
Our approach to nature and biodiversity is integrated with our broader environmental strategy, including our efforts on climate change. This reflects not only our ability to influence these issues through similar channels – e.g., disclosing relevant metrics such as waste, reducing our operational impacts, and providing data and intelligence solutions for our customers – but also the interconnectedness between climate and the overall health of ecosystems.
As a complement to our net-zero goals for climate change, we have established net-zero goals for our other key operational environmental impacts, which we are currently advancing through our real estate sustainability strategy.
In this section, we provide details and highlights of these specific efforts. For more information on our broader environmental strategy, see Energy and Climate Change. For information on how we are involving our people in protecting the environment, see Community and Economic Impact.
Our Zero-Impact Goals
Understanding Our Impact Through TNFD
TNFD is a global, market-led initiative with the mission to provide a management and disclosure framework for organizations to report and act on evolving nature-related risks and opportunities. Our Head of Sustainable 1 is a member of TNFD. We describe our approach based on TNFD below.
To understand our impact on nature and biodiversity, S&P Global worked with Sustainable1 to conduct its first Nature and Biodiversity Risk Assessment in 2023 and updated the analysis in 2024 to include additional office locations and data centers. We consider short-, medium- and long-term time horizons in the analysis. Two key performance indicators are used to monitor the interaction of our operations with nature: Company Impact Ratio and offices located in Protected Areas or Key Biodiversity Areas. For two years in a row, Sustainable1’s analysis shows that our impact remains very low. We continue to build our approach to understanding the linkages between climate and nature as data and analytics evolve.
Water
In concert with our efforts to reduce building-related greenhouse gas emissions, our real estate sustainability strategy has been tailored to advance our goal to achieve water net-zero across our global offices by 2030. We are working toward our goals by reducing usage through water efficiency measures while exploring opportunities for alternative water collection in our offices.
We are continuing efforts to improve our ability to collect accurate data on water use for our leased offices in multi-tenant facilities. We have introduced new green lease clauses and a sustainable office fit-out specification that each include a requirement for landlords to install and operate sub-metering equipment, or else to provide the ability for S&P Global to install its own meter.
Waste
S&P Global continues to take steps on our journey to zero-waste. Key activities in 2024 included:
Waste contracts
We continued an ongoing effort to retender all waste contracts in our direct control to determine if there are regional suppliers offering a zero-waste-to-landfill service with data and certification included.
Zero-plastic projects
As of year-end, we completed removal of single-use plastics in 13 offices.
Green leasing
Our green lease clauses include requirements for landlords to support our zero-waste goals, including providing a zero-waste-to-landfill option if available in the region. For example, the lease for our new Manchester office includes a requirement for the landlord to achieve zero waste to landfill.
Sustainable office fit-outs
Our sustainable office fit-out specifications include measures to improve circularity and waste management, including measuring all construction waste and encouraging the use of materials with low embodied carbon and/or recycled content. In 2024, we collected waste data for our Cape Town and Dubai office fit-out projects and wrote requirements to collect total waste and percentage recycled into our construction contracts. Design requirements for our new Manchester office featured several waste-related goals, including:
- 100% of strip-out waste and 95% of total construction waste diverted from landfill.
- Less than 3.5 tonnes of waste generated per 100 m2 net internal area (NIA).
- 30% recycled content by value.
- 10% reused content by value.
See data tables in Appendix.
Waste and Recycling
** For offices where we have operational control of waste contractor.
** E-waste is reported separately and not included in metrics above.
Nature Finance Thought Leadership
In addition to advancing nature-related analyses and disclosures pertaining to our own operations, S&P Global actively contributes to research and dialogues exploring the fundamental role of natural capital in underpinning economic growth. For example, in 2024, S&P Global Ratings published research titled Tipping Points Shrink the Sustainable Growth Playing Field, and Sustainable1 published Unpriced Environmental Costs: The Top Externalities of the Global Market.
Additionally, the Global Head of Market Engagement currently chairs the Biodiversity Working Group of the Future of Sustainability Data Alliance (FoSDA), which supports the evolution of a global ecosystem of key actors that are defining the Nature Finance agenda.