Identification and Management of Sustainability Topics

Sustainability topics and materiality assessment

The identification of those sustainability topics that matter most to our business and our stakeholders is an important foundation of our approach to sustainable development. We use the results to constantly enhance our sustainability management tools. They also provide a basis for guiding corporate processes to identify and manage potential opportunities and risks. The Materiality Assessment based on this is an essential element specifically of corporate reporting.

To derive the topics that are material for BASF we developed a new process in 2022 reflecting the recent changes in frameworks and regulations. We are using the concept of double materiality which acknowledges the two dimensions of impact materiality and financial materiality and taking into account positive and negative impacts along the value chain.

Applying this concept, we derived the following 12 material topics (in alphabetical order):

Last modified: September 2022

In annual updates, we check whether new topics are coming up and confirm if the importance and materiality of the identified topics changed significantly. Our list of material topics is then adjusted accordingly.