Strategy and Stakeholders

All well-run businesses have a strategy, and without exception all businesses have stakeholders - including customers, investors, suppliers, employees, NGOs, government and regulators, and the communities within which they operate. If environment performance management is to move from merely a compliance and measurement activity to one that genuinely adds value to the business and helps guide its strategic direction, then understanding and relating to its strategy and stakeholder is key.


By considering environmental impacts (and hence measures and targets) in the context of strategy, two things are achieved.

First, the process becomes forward looking and contextualises the performance measures and targets, meaning there is greater potential to influence the strategy. Second, it engages a different level in the organization.

By incorporating stakeholder considerations, both internal and external, the process can become something that is of relevance to the expectations of both audiences. It therefore has the potential to not only meet, but also to influence, those stakeholder considerations. Each stakeholder may have its own perspective on environmental priorities, and understanding and mapping these is important to ensure the relevance of the measurement set chosen and the targets established as a consequence.