Overview of sustainability reporting

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Overview of Sustainability Reporting

Sustainable Development and the Transparency Imperative

The goal of sustainable development is to “meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” As key forces in society, organizations of all kinds have an important role to play in achieving this goal.

Yet in this era of unprecedented growth, achieving this goal can seem more of an aspiration than a reality. As the political economy becomes increasingly globalized, new and unprecedented opportunities to accelerate wealth generation appear via knowledge-sharing and access to technology. But with these opportunities come risks to the sustainability of the environment as a principal source for economic development, and the strains of an ever-increasing human population with differentiated opportunities for participation into the global economy. 

While developments in knowledge and technology are contributing to growth, they can also contribute to solving the collateral risks and threats that growth brings. Innovations in technology, management, and public policy increasingly offer organizations new choices in the way their operations, products, services, and other interactions impact on the earth, people, and economies. 

The urgency and magnitude of these risks and threats to our collective sustainability on the one hand, and the increasing choice and opportunities on the other hand, will inevitably make organizations’ transparency in disclosing about their impacts on global sustainability the expected norm in stakeholder relations, investment decisions, and other market relations. To support this expectation, a globally shared and widely understood framework of concepts, consistent language, and agreed metrics for communicating clearly and transparently about sustainability is needed. It is Global Reporting Initiative’s mission to fulfill this need by providing a trusted and credible framework for sustainability reporting.

Transparency about the sustainability of organizational activities is of interest to a diverse range of stakeholders, including business, labor, non-governmental organizations, investors, accountancy, and others. GRI has relied on the collaboration of a large voluntary network of experts from all of these stakeholder groups in consensus-seeking consultations which have directly resulted in the creation and continuous improvement of the reporting framework since GRI’s founding in 1997. This multi-stakeholder approach has given the reporting framework:

• Widespread credibility with stakeholder groups
• Leading insights on reporting needs as learned through feedback on the practical application of the reporting framework over time

This document is the draft version of the third generation of Sustainability Reporting Guidelines (G3). It is the result of a multi-stakeholder collaboration that occurred over 2004 and 2005. It is being released for 90 days for the purpose of inviting widespread public comment. It will be further amended based on feedback received, and will then undergo an approval process involving GRI’s governance system. The Guidelines are projected to be released in final form in October 2006.

The Purpose of a Sustainability Report

Sustainability reporting is the practice of measuring, disclosing and being accountable for organizational performance towards the goal of sustainable development. “Sustainability reporting” is a broad term that is considered synonymous with other terms used to describe accounting for economic, environmental, and social impacts (e.g., triple bottom line, corporate responsibility reporting, etc.)

A sustainability report should provide a balanced and reasonable representation of the sustainability performance of the reporting organization - including both positive and negative contributions.

Sustainability reports based on the GRI reporting framework disclose outcomes and results that occurred within the reporting period in the context of the organization’s commitments, strategy, and management approach. Reports can be used for the following purposes, among others:

• Benchmarking and assessing sustainability performance with respect to laws, norms, codes, performance standards, and voluntary initiatives.
• Demonstrating how the organization influences and is influenced by sustainable development expectations.
• Comparing performance within an organization and between different organizations over time.

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