Badar Farooq is an experienced Health, Safety, Environment & Sustainability professional possessing consulting, engineering, construction & industrial experience in an integrated Corporate Responsibility function across industries ranging from energy, power, infrastructure to real estate. He has primarily resided and worked in the MENA region.
Badar has also conducted, facilitated and published scientific research in Switzerland as part of his undergraduate environmental science degree from the American University of Sharjah; this is complemented by a mini MBA from the PwC Academy Dubai.
Badar has been developing his Social Responsibility and Sustainability acumen for the past few years. As part of this process he founded Sustainimate – a personal project to increase transparency on corporate sustainability performance reporting and stakeholder engagement via social media videos.
Read our interesting convo with Badar Farooq below:
Kindly tell us about your brain-child, Sustainimate.
Sustainimate works in the nexus space of sustainability and public communications by increasing transparency on corporate sustainability performance reporting and stakeholder engagement via high-quality, attractive, easy-to-view and easy-to-share animated videos.
What prompted you to initiate Sustainimate and what do you seek to achieve with it?
Sustainimate arose as a result of my professional experience and mutual interests in occupational health & safety, sustainable development, CSR and digital media.
I seek to proliferate information on the sustainability performance of companies that is currently publicly available, but often hard to find within long and obtuse corporate reports. This is especially important for relevant stakeholders like employees, customers, clients, investors etc.
Of what essence is sustainability reporting to sustainable development?
The sustainability reporting process allows business (as well as non-profit) entities to measure, record and communicate their impact on various elements of national and international sustainable development to stakeholders. This can hopefully feed into a self-improvement loop whereby the entities reduce their negative impacts and increase their positive ones as corporate citizens of global society.
How will you ensure that reports featured by Sustainimate are not green washed reports as we know green washing has become a big threat to sustainability reporting?
Green washing is indeed prevalent among all sorts of reporting entities, and especially so where being seen as ‘a green citizen’ is vital for having a license to operate commercially.
Sustainimate does not directly prevent green washing since we essentially present verbatim what is publicly reported by entities. We do, however, hope this increased public transparency will allow stakeholders to better examine and compare what is being reported and ultimately determine if and where green washing is being carried out. Hopefully any relevant feedback can be provided to reporting entities to improve their recording and reporting process going forward.
It has been reported that Dubai’s rapid urbanization has led to an environmental crisis especially as regards water stress and fossil-based energy consumption; what steps are being taken to foster environmental sustainability in Dubai?
Indeed, water and energy consumption per capita have been historically high in Dubai and quite a few initiatives have and are being undertaken to address these issues. You can read the Dubai government’s self-reflection on this here:
Having been a sustainability expert in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region for more than a decade, what would you say are the forces that will shape sustainability in coming years, globally?
I think increased public and corporate consciousness around sustainable development and the SDGs via various awareness platforms, such as digital media, will lead to more public and private initiatives to enhance positive impact. Data analysis around various aspects of national and corporate sustainability performance parameters is becoming increasingly important and popular, as evidenced by the growing number of startups appearing in this space.
What is your favorite Sustainable Development Goal (SDG)?
SDG 12: Responsible Consumption & Production
How do we reach you for questions or comments?
I am happy to communicate/connect via my LinkedIn account. You can also engage with me via Sustainimate’s various social media channels on Vimeo, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. Do check them out!