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Sustainable Development
Sustainable Development
Securing the Future sets out the UK Government's sustainable development strategy with the overarching aim to:
"enable all people throughout the world to satisfy their basic needs and enjoy a better quality of life without compromising the quality of life of present and future generations".
Our challenge is twofold; to ensure our network and the surrounding environment are fit for present and future generations, and to make sure our activities and practices have as little adverse impact as possible on people and the wider environment.
Sustainability is founded on bringing full and lasting economic, social and environmental benefits. The government's sustainability strategy highlights four priorities for action across the UK:
- Sustainable consumption and production
- Climate change and energy
- Natural resource protection and environmental enhancement
- Sustainable communities
Delivering against these priorities as well as our aim and objectives is a real challenge. As a cross cutting agenda, our progress towards delivering sustainable development requires cooperation and involvement from all areas of our business and supply chain to be successful. We are required to consider the whole life implications of infrastructure investment, the sourcing of materials and their use, reuse, and disposal.
The Department for Transports response to the Eddington and Stern Reports, Delivering a Sustainable Transport System, confirmed that road transport has a vital role to play in supporting economic growth. However, alongside this we must consider and react to our sustainable development and climate change impacts and contribute in full to the legislative requirements for reducing carbon emissions.
The response also acknowledged the long-term challenges faced by the Highways Agency in improving reliability and tackling capacity constraints against a backdrop of increasing construction costs, environmental concerns and growing traffic volumes. Finding the right balance between measures to make better use of the existing network and providing targeted increases in capacity where they are really needed, will be a key challenge for us over the coming years.
The purpose of the Highways Agency's Sustainable Development Action Plans (SDAPs) is to ensure that our staff and supply chain have a consistent understanding of sustainable development. SDAPs emphasise how, through our everyday work, we can positively move towards being a more sustainable organisation and minimise social and environmental harm.
Our SDAPs contain a series of actions for key areas of our business, to ensure we embed sustainable development considerations as part of our day to day business. We measure performance against these actions and report our progress in annual reports.
We put people, our customers, first; by being aware of all people's needs in the wider community, those neighboring the strategic road network, and road users. We should seek protection of the environment in its widest sense and deliver the opportunities for enhancement, today and for future generations. Finally, we must understand the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the materials and energy we procure and the transportation of goods and people we procure and influence.
