CSR PORTRAIT N°10: Artelia Vietnam

Can you explain your activity in a few words?

Artelia provides engineering, consultancy and project management services in a wide range of markets, from urban development, water, building construction or environment. Our renewable energy and environment department in Vietnam is highly active on the development of solar, wind and hydropower energy as well as on the support of real estate developers who are willing to reduce the environmental footprint of their projects. We are also involved in the development of environmental and social impact assessment studies to mitigate the negative and maximize the positive environmental and social impacts of a wide range of projects.

Have you already implemented a social or environmental project in your company? Or do you have a sustainable development policy?

As we just mentioned, parts of our activities are directly related to the management of social and environmental issues. As an example, ARTELIA acts for sustainable development in the building sector. Construction, by its very nature, is resource-intensive. Choosing the “Green Building” path is vital. In line with the Paris Agreement on climate change, we are working on reducing the carbon footprint by a careful selection of materials. Health and environment must not be neglected too. Providing better indoor air quality and biodiversity improvements are also in the scope of our engineering services.

Although these are parts of our business activities and are not CSR projects strictly speaking, we are also involved in CSR activities through the ARTELIA foundation. The purpose of the foundation is to support associations and NGOs advancing social, humanitarian and environmental causes and to enable Artelia employees to bring their expertise and time on a voluntary basis.

This allowed our staff to bring their knowledge and support to several local NGOs such as Enfants d’Asie in Cambodia or IECD here in Vietnam. The Foundation also recently created an emergency fund to support NGOs threatened by the complex situation brought by the Covid-19. In Vietnam, this fund took the form of donations to Blue Dragon and Maison Chance, two local NGOs that helps underprivileged childrens.

What type of advice would you give to other companies in Vietnam to launch such CSR project?

A successful CSR plan should integrate and be a leverage of improvement for the activities of the company. Working both within and outside its value chain is key to meaningful actions. We are personally convinced that this is our common responsibility to develop business that way. Especially today, when we become more and more aware of our impact, CSR could become an opportunity of development for business that respects and promotes whenever possible the three pillars of sustainable development.