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. 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 & standards (16:40) The business case for DE&I and ESG (19:10) Reimaging real estate amid the climate crisis (23:30)