Can sustainability reporting be meaningful?
The list of companies in the world committed to measuring and reporting the sustainability of their operations using the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) framework is growing. At last count, the number of companies producing GRI reports for 2006 was approaching 1300, a new high. We applaud this trend, and are proud to have been an Organizational Stakeholder of GRI since our founding in 2004.
As an international standard for corporate sustainability reporting, however, GRI is not quite cooked yet. Strictly speaking, reports prepared in accordance with its guidelines do not actually make it possible to determine the sustainability of the organizations involved. This is because they usually fail to include what GRI itself refers to as ‘sustainability context’.
In the latest version of GRI (G3), sustainability context is explained as follows:
Performance information should be placed in context. The underlying question of sustainability reporting is how an organization contributes to the improvement or deterioration of economic, environmental, and social conditions at the local, regional, or global level. Simply reporting on trends in individual performance (or the efficiency of the organization) will fail to respond to this underlying question. Reporting organizations should therefore seek ways to express their individual performance in relation to broader environmental and social sustainability.
We couldn’t agree more. Still, we have never seen a corporate sustainability report prepared in accordance with GRI that does this. In a very real and unsettling sense, then, most of what passes for mainstream sustainability reporting in the world today arguably fails to report on sustainability at all. Why? Because the sustainability context required to draw meaningful bottom-line conclusions is missing!
This is where we come into play. We are active supporters and advocates of GRI reporting. We subscribe to its multi-bottom-line orientation to sustainability measurement, and we are deeply committed to its notion of sustainability context. What we offer is knowledge about how to do it!
At the Center for Sustainable Innovation, we have been developing a methodology for bringing context to sustainability reporting in general, and to GRI reporting in particular. The result? The Social Footprint Method, the Global Warming Footprint, and other ideas that can help fulfill the promise of true sustainability reporting. We invite interested parties to contact us for more information.
Bill Baue, socialfunds.com
