The principle of kokoro which often translates to heart, actually has a range of meanings which include wisdom, sincerity and sensibility. To us kokoro embodies how we approach sustainability in its widest context – to be a custodian of the resources we utilise for the benefit of future generations.
Today, our impact as humans on the biosphere has led us to anthropogenic mass or human-made mass exceeding overall living biomass on this planet.
Most of this human-made mass comes in the form of buildings and infrastructure, composed of concrete, aggregates, bricks and asphalt that produce c.40% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
Climate change to some could be considered a tail risk, but like a pandemic the consequences could be severe for our civilisation. Therefore we believe buildings we own need to both consider the resources they consume and be resilient to both climate change and societal shift.
Each investment we own has a sustainability plan, this is in-built into our investment process and impacts our underwriting. For instance, will a greener building command higher rents and be more resilient producing less volatility in exit yield? Our aim is to make our built environment better in every way under own ownership. That means understanding the lifecycle of our buildings, including the embodied carbon we are adding to buildings through refurbishment and the operational carbon our stakeholders emit in utilising our buildings.
We are currently assessing our buildings with BREEAM but we are not wedded to any particular standard and look to the most appropriate assessment for the investment. Law sets the minimum standard but we are more aspirational.
We are cognisant that everyone we engage with is on their own net zero pathway and therefore our goal is to make engagement mutually beneficial. We ask all our new tenants to sign green leases and where we have incumbent tenants to engage in operational assessments. Sometimes just helping tenants to better understand the equipment in the office, the building management systems and/or energy management systems can provide a cue for changing habits.
The list of people we engage with in order to successfully execute an investment are numerous and our goal in bringing together a team is to ensure we are like minded. For instance we like to understand whether people we appoint believe in paying all of their staff a living wage and have their own sustainability practices in place.
It’s in our DNA to think macro and micro and this is no more evident than the community our investments touch. Our social goal is foremost to make sure our stakeholders are happy – we do this by being visible and giving them a level of service which exceeds their expectations.
We also do not like our real estate to feel like fortresses that the community cannot engage in and actively consider how we create social spaces in our buildings. A good example would be our collaboration with Artbox.London, in our Dover Street and Berkeley Street investments, which you can learn more about below.
Distinct from our commitment to investing in social impact businesses and dedicating time to charities and social enterprises, we have always believed in giving.
In 2020, we joined 1% for the Planet, drawn to Yvon Chouinard’s conviction that a company could be both good and profitable, a business in service of the Earth as much as its investors. Six years on, that membership has carried our support to dozens of charities.
As our business has matured, so too has our thinking on how best to give. We have taken stock and reoriented our approach. The amount we donate will not fall – if anything, our new philanthropic programme allows us to do more with it. We can now direct giving across a wider range of causes, carry donations forward from one year to the next rather than treating each year in isolation, and ringfence specific commitments so their impact can be tracked with real rigour rather than assumed.
We remain believers in transparency over good intentions left unspoken – our annual report will continue to hold us to account. Giving of this kind is not an addendum to what we do. It remains embedded in our DNA.
From a diversity and inclusion perspective we are partnering with both Upreach and Neurodiversity in Business, we hope adding our voice to their causes magnifies their impact.
We believe in the network effect, whether it’s providing people without a natural network access to ours and/or using our interactions to talk about their causes.
Beyond real estate we encourage the team to stretch their minds, promoting angel investing in social impact businesses broaden our lens to consider all of the United Nations Sustainability Goals. See below some of the companies we have invested in.
and the list is growing.
Ultimately we are guided by our mandate to create sustainable real estate that generates outsized risk weighted returns for our investors whilst enriching our planet and its inhabitants. We believe these are not incompatible goals.
For more detailed information regarding our Sustainability Strategy (including KPIs), please click here.
Our business is B Corp Certified.