Qatar Among Leading Countries Focused On ESG

(MENAFN- The Peninsula) Deepak John | The Peninsula

Doha: Qatar has been focused on environmental sustainability especially when it comes to generating an ecosystem for investment, said a senior official during an industry roundtable discussion yesterday.

The third day of Qatar Economic Forum, Powered by Bloomberg hosted a roundtable session entitled 'ESG 2.0: Ensuring Sustainability in an Evolving World' which shed light on how companies are positioning themselves to investors.

Addressing the roundtable discussion, H E Ambassador Bader Omar Al Dafa, Special Envoy for Climate Change and Sustainability at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs shed light on sustainability in Qatar. He noted:“The process has already started here and Qatar is one of the leading countries with environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policies, whether it is the public or the private sector. It is more important to educate the public about ESG and the more educated they are the better response we will have in dealing with sustainability”. 

H E Sheikh Ali Alwaleed Al Thani, CEO of Investment Promotion Agency (IPA) Qatar said:“When it comes to ESG in Qatar, and especially 'E' and the 'S' were enshrined in our National Vision back in 2008 before this topic went into the mainstream. Qatar very much focuses on environmental sustainability especially when it comes to generating an ecosystem for investment and this is what investors are looking for. They are looking for environmentally sustainable ways to invest and also for impact investing that is investment which will lead to impact when it comes to social and environmental development”. 

Sheikh Ali further noted:“Later today, we are signing an agreement with Green Boom – a company that will manufacture environmentally friendly absorbent in Qatar and will significantly reduce the carbon intensity of our hydrocarbon facilities. 

“So, there are many opportunities for us, and we are working towards providing a platform that investors can view as being a platform for impact investing especially when it comes to environmental and social development,” he explained.

Responding to query about issuing green bonds as part of ESG, Sheikh Ali said:“We already launched around $600m worth of green bonds and to expand that offering across different domestic banks, I think would be important as part of Qatar's ESG portfolio. Governments can play big role in incentivising companies, helping them get to scale and also to achieve the necessary technological advancements to make their products more competitive”. 

Abdul Rahman Al Thehaiban, Managing Director for Middle East, Turkey and Africa at Google Cloud added:“We look at sustainability from an internal and external perspective as it is one of the key pillars of our vision. We have already set certain target by 2030 to be carbon negative. Since 2007 we have been working on addressing carbon neutralism and we ensure that we address this locally. From external perspective we have been working closely with our customers to help them provide better services and have sustainable business using the technology we provide. 

“We believe that from technological point of view that we can play vital role in driving digital transformation in organisations. In the region we have already announced launching data centre in Qatar and later in Saudi. The key structure of our investment is on basis of sustainability while we maintain carbon neutral unless we achieve all objectives to be carbon-negative by 2030 providing renewable energy and that itself will contribute to sustainability. It will be in alignment to a country like Qatar looking into their strategy of addressing ESG,” said Al Thehaiban.

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