Environment and ecosystems

The irreparable effects of biodiversity loss are beginning to be recognised as equally as serious as the effects of climate change, and their impacts will be felt for generations to come. There is an increasing focus on biodiversity and alignment among policymakers, industry, civil society and the financial community.

Given the critical need to reverse global biodiversity loss, we are establishing a baseline for biodiversity impacts, so we can set targets rooted in scalable best practices.

We are increasingly expected to have externally certified management systems in place across our entire business. This is now common in tender requirements and in dialogues with our customers. Our ocean-based activities have been ISO 14001 certified for over a decade. We are working to gain a deeper understanding of the benefits, risks and opportunities associated with establishing a company-wide third-party verified system.

In 2022, we focused on strengthening environmental standards and frameworks to support organic and inorganic growth, as well as our ongoing operations. We want to ensure that we are expanding our operations with a structured environmental and social framework that helps us to ‘design-out’ impact and issues. At the same time, we also want to maximise positive effects and make sure that we fully understand the environmental and social performance, risks and opportunities created by our significant inorganic growth – especially in our landside operations.

As a member of the Alliance for Clean Air, we have contributed to the development of a pioneering methodology – the Stockholm environment Institute (SEI) methodology – for measuring corporate emissions across value chains. During the pilot, we calculated our emissions associated with electricity generation, fuel combustion, and industrial processes.

Our first emissions inventory shows that our ocean business is currently the largest emitter, contributing heavily to Maersk’s nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions. However, our expansion into landside transportation will entail further increase in our air emissions.

See more details in the ESG Fact Book.