Our business impacts and depends upon nature throughout our value chain: upstream, across our direct operations, and downstream. In 2023, we conducted spatial analysis to understand where our direct operations are in proximity to protected areas. As legislation increases in this space – Biodiversity Net Gain, Nutrient Neutrality, Water Neutrality – understanding how our estate interfaces with nature will become even more critical.
Selection of protected areas
Designation and management of protected areas are key mechanisms for taking action to reverse the loss of biodiversity. We have used the JNCC recommended indicators for protected areas in the UK, which includes:
- International Designations: Special Protected Areas (SPA), Special Areas of Conservation (SAC) and sites designated under the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance (RAMSAR)
- National Designations: National Nature Reserves (NNR), Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and Areas of Special Scientific Interest (ASSI)
- Landscape Designations: Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), National Scenic Areas (NSA), National Parks
Defining the proximity
We used four segments of proximity to understand how near our assets were to the protected areas:
- Inside: inside a protected area
- Adjacent: <1km from a protected area
- Near: 1-5km from a protected area
- Close: 5-20km from a protected area
In our analysis, we excluded any stores which were ‘near’ and ‘close’ to protected areas, as 99.99% of our assets matched these criteria. We focused only on assets which met the ‘inside’ or ‘adjacent’ criteria.
Sainsbury’s group assets’ proximity to UK-protected areas
What’s next?
We will continue to conduct this mapping on an annual basis and will disclose our findings in our CDP Climate Change disclosure.
We will use the insights in our exploration of the Taskforce for Nature-related Financial Disclosure (TNFD) framework, and the Science Based Targets for Nature (SBTN) initiative.