Association "Russian Forest" took part in the forum "Conscious industrial ecology" in Irkutsk

Today Irkutsk hosted the Conscious Industrial Ecology forum. It brought together representatives of large companies from various industries, heads of environmental departments, government authorities and public organizations to discuss the balance of environmental responsibility of the state, enterprises and society.

The Russian Forest Association is represented by First Vice-President Andrey Goncharov. As part of the main panel discussion, he spoke about the difference in approaches to ESG reporting.

Andrey Goncharov, First Vice President of the Russian Forest Association: “There are many ESG ratings and methodologies, and each rating agency has its own approach and methodology, so the same company can have a completely different rating. Steps towards standardization have already been taken - these are the recommendations of the Bank of Russia on taking into account ESG factors and the President's instruction to the Government of the Russian Federation by January 1, 2023 to determine the criteria for classifying investment projects as projects that meet the requirements of ESG.

Andrey Borisovich also expressed the position of the Association that projects that meet clear ESG criteria should not be subject to excessive administrative burden, but a risk-based approach should be implemented.

Also, the forum included several round tables and summarizing the results of the environmental hackathon, where students presented their solutions on environmental cases, and the forum participants voted for the best ideas.