Sustainability report 2024 - Ministry of Foreign Affairs
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is working towards a sustainable future. To show how we are doing this, we publish our sustainability report for the year 2024. In this report, we describe our goals for the themes of climate, circular economy and social responsibility in the chain, the steps we have taken to achieve these goals and our plans for 2025.
Climate
We talk about special projects and small successes here. But 2024 was also a year of big steps and important policy decisions for us. Of a new target for the theme of climate: 40% emission reduction in 2030, compared to 2022. Of a significant reduction of our CO₂ footprint in 2024. And of new actions in 2025 to significantly reduce our flight emissions in particular.
Circularity
Or read about our new embassy building in Brussels. One of the most sustainable buildings in Belgium, thanks to the focus on CO₂ savings and circularity: all workplaces in the building have been refurbished. It is one of the pilot projects that give us more insight into our circular possibilities for this complex theme. Experiences that we use to continue working on an internationally workable strategy for circular business operations in 2025.
Social chain responsibility
You will discover that sustainability is also about people for us in our chapter Social chain responsibility. This topic was given a firmer place in our organization in 2024. We established our living wage policy and started developing a policy guideline for real estate projects. In 2025, we will build on this, for example by monitoring and supervising the implementation of the living wage policy.
Sustainable organizational culture
The sustainability program Mission Sustainable has been guiding all our ambitions, plans and actions since 2021. The Mission Sustainable team not only works on formulating and implementing policy, it also builds a sustainable organizational culture. They do this by informing and encouraging colleagues. In order to professionalize sustainability within our representations, they also help them to perform baseline measurements, draw up sustainability plans and set up sustainability teams.