Integrating Space Sustainability into Double Materiality Decision-making and Reporting
- Paper ID
62031
- author
- company
Lockheed Martin Corporation
- country
United States
- year
2021
- abstract
There is growing interest and mandate for Double Materiality to be included in company decision-making and reporting. The two materialities referenced in this concept are a) financial and b) environmental and social. While the environmental aspect can be construed to include a wide array of issues, it has thus far been limited in practice to Earth’s climate. This paper recommends an important part of double materiality is an organization’s impact on and impact from space sustainability. Considerations include space debris, space access, electromagnetic spectrum use, in-situ resource utilization, space weather, and benefits to life on Earth from space-based systems. Financial materiality has almost exclusively focused on impacts to an organization and primarily been limited to the near and medium-term time horizon. By including the double materiality of space sustainability, organizations consider the interconnected and limited nature of space resources. Current double materiality efforts relating to climate change serve as a useful example. Decisions within an organization and by its stakeholders are best informed when the risks and opportunities to the universal enterprise of human space use are clearly accounted for and communicated.