Sustainability Street: Tracking REITs’ ESG Progress

Welcome back to Sustainability Street, our podcast on the intersection of commercial real estate and the world we live. For this episode, I am chatting with Jessica Long, Nareit’s senior vice president of Environmental Stewardship & Sustainability, following the release of the sixth annual REIT Industry Sustainability Report.

The report tracks ESG progress for the 100 largest REITs by market capitalization in five areas: transparency and reporting, leadership & governance, resources & resilience, workforce & culture and community and business connections.

According to Long, REITs’ transparency, vertical integration and focus on corporate governance has allowed them to make impressive strides over the past seven years.

Here are some highlights of the topics we discussed:

• The public path to sustainability (2:39)
• Energized by results (7:35)
• Room for improvement (11:45)
• A maze of frameworks and standards (16:40)
• The business case for DE&I and ESG (19:10)
• Reimaging real estate amid the climate crisis (23:30)

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