KOGAS
Prohibition of Deforestation
KOGAS is fully aware of the importance of forest protection for sustainable development, and understand the potential business risks of deforestation.
Forests are essential for the survival of all living things. Forests occupy 30% of the Earth’s surface, and play a key role in ecosystems as a source of carbon uptake and biodiversity. However, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, forests equivalent to about 73% of the area of Korea are lost every year worldwide, causing extinction and accelerating climate change.
Accordingly, the problem of global deforestation has become a major issue that must be resolved urgently. We are taking all necessary measures to minimize negative impact on forests across our entire business value chain.
Current Activities
From the business planning stage, KOGAS systematically conducts environmental impact assessment on the surrounding forest and environment to implement measures minimizing environmental damage, and faithfully performs follow-up management and monitoring throughout operations. Through the establishment of the KOGAS forest fire monitoring system, we have implemented forest fire risk assessment, a joint response system for high-risk areas, and improvement of the forest fire situation control system. We have been striving continuously to conserve forest resources not only in our facilities, but also in neighbouring areas through early firefighting activities. We established the KOGAS’ commitment to prohibition of deforestation in 2021, to reflect the growing concern over deforestation and to reinforce
early forest fire extingishing training
Our Commitments
- We will not operate in areas that are particularly worthy of protection due to their rich forest resources (forest genetic resource protected area, Baekdudaegan conservation area, wetlands conservation area).
- We will not operate in internationally protected areas (Ramsar Wetlands, IUCN protected area Categories I-IV, UNESCO World Natural Heritage).
- We will seek help from outside agencies to fulfill our commitments to prohibit deforestation.
- We will support local, national and global initiatives to prohibit deforestation.
- We will effectively provide relevant information to our employees and stakeholders to better understand the importance and severity of deforestation issues
- (Target: Zero loss rate in protected forest areas at home and abroad).
By internalizing these commitments into our management system, KOGAS will faithfully implement all of our promises to achieve the quantitative goal of zero loss in domestic and international forest protection areas, and will check and disclose results every year. Furthermore, as a public institution, we will continue to develop our targets for forest conservation so that we can set a model for ESG corporate management.
※ In the above commitment, “we” refers to Korea Gas Corporation and subsidiaries over which KOGAS has direct control.
