UPM-Kymmene

Lobbying
UPM-Kymmene discloses a list of trade associations of which it is a member wherever it operates.

Stakeholder engagement
The company discloses its process for engaging with stakeholder groups, including frequency and channels, beyond its materiality assessment or an equivalent. Also, its stakeholder engagement covers nature, including biodiversity, and social issues.

Sustainability strategy and accountability
The company discloses its process for identifying and prioritising its most relevant sustainability impacts as well as the outcome of this process, in relation to its sustainability strategy, and reports consistently against all its targets.

Ecosystem conversion and restoration
The company has a commitment to ensure zero conversion, and discloses some activities to achieve conversion-free supply chains. The company has time-bound targets to achieve conversion-free supply chains, and discloses the proportion of high-risk commodities which are conversion-free. The company provides evidence that it has achieved 100% conversion-free supply chains for all its relevant high-risk commodities.

Furthermore, the company is committed to restoring ecosystems. It discloses details and outcomes of ecosystem restoration projects in areas affected by its own operations or by its suppliers, as well as beyond these areas (e.g. through compensation or offset mechanisms).

GHG emissions
The company has set time-bound targets to reduce its scope 1, 2 and 3 greenhouse gas emissions as well as report progress against them. Additionally, the company reduces its scope 1,2 and 3 emissions and its targets are aligned with a 1.5-degree trajectory.

Resource exploitation and circularity performance
UPM-Kymmene discloses its inputs, including its material footprint. The company discloses which organisms it directly exploits for commercial uses, including wild animal and plant species.

Solid and air pollution
The company is reducing the production of hazardous substances and waste.

Water
The company reports how much water is withdrawn for its own operations in water-stressed areas, and it demonstrates reducing water withdrawal in its own operations. Furthermore, the company discloses its processes for managing and monitoring discharge water quality. It also regularly reports on water pollution and has targets to reduce them.

Indigenous Peoples’ and land rights
The company is committed to respect Indigenous Peoples’ rights.

Safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment
The company is committed to respecting local communities’ right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment.

Act ethically
The company intertwines stringent anti-bribery and corruption measures within its operational protocols, deploying a top-down risk discussion across all business areas and embedding related clauses in contracts with direct business relationships. Complementing this, a grievance mechanism is established for stakeholders to voice related concerns. Alongside, the company upholds a public commitment to safeguard personal data and discloses its global tax strategy, evidencing a multipronged approach to ethical business conduct and transparency.

Provide and promote decent work
The company emphasizes worker rights and welfare, revealing the percentage of its workforce covered by collective bargaining agreements, and commits to both direct and indirect (via business relationships) adherence to health and safety policies. Specificities in monitoring business relationships’ safety performance and a commitment to living wage initiatives, with associated targets, demonstrate its ethical labor practices. Firm overtime and working hour policies are publicly shared. Additionally, with transparency in workforce demographics and a notable goal to boost female representation to 40% by 2030—coupled with the current 33% female board presence—it showcases its stride towards gender equality.

Respect human rights
The company pledges adherence to ILO core labour rights and human rights through public policy statements, outlining its mechanisms for identifying and assessing human rights risks and impacts, especially focusing on its salient issues, within its own operations and activities. It discloses a global system, addressing prevention, mitigation, and remediation of human rights issues, extending its application to its supply chain. Recognizing migrant workers, women, young, temporary, and contractor workers as particularly vulnerable groups, the company provides human rights grievance mechanisms, ensuring accessibility for all workers and external stakeholders potentially impacted by its operations.

Lobbying
The company has an opportunity to disclose a clear and detailed framework for assessing alignment of its trade associations with its sustainability targets and to report (potential) misalignments.

Stakeholder engagement
The company has an opportunity to disclose an overview of the issues raised during its stakeholder engagement activities.

Sustainability strategy and accountability
The company discloses no sustainability strategy with nature-related targets and does not report on sustainability accountability within its governance structure.

Ecosystem conversion and restoration
No evidence was found regarding the company’s efforts to avoid ecosystem conversion, including deforestation, or promote restoration. The company has an opportunity to develop a strategy and publicly report on specific, time-bound targets.

Impact and dependencies assessment
While the company progressed positively with key indicators in 2022, achieving a net positive impact on Finland’s biodiversity since setting the 2018 target, it has an opportunity to holistically assess and quantify nature impacts, including biodiversity, across value chains. In Uruguay, the company protects biodiversity and sources wood responsibly but lacks evidence of assessing nature impacts, including biodiversity, within the supply chain. Although acknowledging operational ties to biodiversity, it doesn’t demonstrate assessing dependencies. Similarly, it doesn’t assess nature dependencies in the supply chain, despite recognizing significant biodiversity impacts in wood sourcing.

Invasive species
The company has not identified any activities that could lead to the introduction of invasive alien species in its own operations.

Key areas and species
The company’s subsidiary, UPM Forestal Oriental, reports species by class and their presence on its lands. However, the company has an opportunity to disclose all species populations within or near its locations at a group level. Similarly, UPM Forestal Oriental shares a map of Uruguayan reserve areas, but the company doesn’t disclose locations near biodiversity-important areas within its operations at the group level. Additionally, the company does not reveal its suppliers’ locations near biodiversity-important areas or provide data on species populations in these locations. While the company discloses the number of threatened species occurrences in its forests, it does not disclose the conservation status of all identified species based on national and international lists in its locations.

Resource exploitation and circularity performance
The company does not report quantitatively on its group-wide circularity performance.

Solid and air pollution
The company has an opportunity to commit to the avoidance of developing or marketing new chemicals or products with SVHC (substance of very high concern) properties.

Water
The company has an opportunity to disclose relevant information on water withdrawal. Moreover, the company could report water pollution metrics and set targets to reduce them. The company does not disclose relevant information related to water, in its operations or supply chains. The company does not disclose a commitment to respect the right to water, nor its processes for implementing preventive and corrective action plans for identified specific risks to the right to water and sanitation in its own operations.

Indigenous Peoples’ and land rights
The company does not disclose its processes to identify and recognize the rights of Indigenous Peoples when activities in its own operations may impact their rights or describes how it obtains Indigenous Peoples’ free, prior and informed consent.

Safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment
The company has an opportunity to zero tolerance for acts of violence, threats, intimidation or judicial harassment committed against land and environmental rights defenders. Moreover, it should track its actual or potential negative impacts on the health of local communities.

Act ethically
The company possesses an opportunity to formulate and disclose a policy outlining its approach toward lobbying and political engagement. It could transparently reveal its expenditures related to lobbying activities and ensure that third-party lobbyists adhere to its lobbying and political engagement policy, reflecting a commitment to ethical political involvement and transparency in its corporate practices.

Provide and promote decent work
The company reveals various safety metrics and injury data but omits specifics like high-consequence work-related injuries and primary injury types. Although implementing living wage assessments, the company doesn’t disclose its methodology or articulate supplier wage support. Commitment to diversity is apparent, but explicit gender equality and women’s empowerment pledges are absent. Disclosing the female to male salary ratio for 90% of salaried employees, it does not provide comprehensive gender pay gap data across all employee categories and significant operation locations.

Respect human rights
The company discloses statements expecting its suppliers to respect the ILO’s fundamental rights at work. However, it has an opportunity to use stronger language to turn the statement into a formal commitment. Furthermore, the company describes a process for identifying its human rights risks, however, it does not disclose more details on the tool and how it is used.