GRI Vision 2020: Universal Sustainability Disclosure

On the last day of the 3rd Amsterdam Conference on Sustainability and Transparency organized by the Global Reporting Initiative, the plenary session included global leaders representing the most widely used Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) reporting frameworks. The discussion was mainly focused on the final vision for sustainability reporting by 2020 and the measures that can be taken by the various stakeholders to move towards a low carbon, sustainable economy.

Heather White, Member of the GRI Stakeholder Council set the stage by asking the question that is haunting everybody- how exactly do we get to a green economy? Isabel Garro, UN Global Impact, talked about the importance of building bridges and the need to standardize the method and collection of data. While the triangle of information, behavior and communication is important, it is also increasingly necessary to communicate the organizational goals internally and externally.

Oded Grajew, Ethos Institute of Business and Social Responsibility, spoke about the changes that have taken place in the sustainability reporting landscape inBrazil over the past 11 years. He stressed the need for changing the measure of development and extending it beyond only GDP comparisons. The business sector is becoming increasingly powerful and in order to move towards a more sustainable development, it is important to mobilize and educate businesses to adopt social responsibility. Kevin McKinley from the International Standards for Organizations (ISO) supported this sentiment by underlining the need for common global approaches and the need to support each other while moving towards this commons goal.

Representing the OECD Investment Committee and the Ministry of Economic Affairs based in the Netherlands, Roel Nieuwenkamp spoke about the need for improving guidelines for emerging economies and inclusion of the human rights issues and supply chain management. Though GRI brings these guidelines together, the challenge for the OECD is to match them. Dumisani Nyoni, Earth Charter Initiative Council, said that in some ways the business instinct of practitioners should be changed and reporting should be made a part of business education.

Alya Kayal, the Calvert Group, gave the opinion that self regulatory reporting processes are incomplete and inconsistent and could be improved in two main areas. First- giving equal spotlight to social and governance reporting along with environmental reporting and Second- the need for proper data as mainstream integration is difficult due to an information and enforcement deficit. GRI co-founder Robert Massie summarized by posing a question of whether G3 guidelines need to be improved and integrated with financial reporting or if the time has come for G4 guidelines.

While the panelists deliberated on the goal 2020, the key points that emerged were the need for bottom up participation and support about individual company reporting for multinationals. While in most countries implementation is disappointing, there is a need for increased regulation and voluntary initiatives around supply chain would remain an ongoing issue. Does public reporting drive better performance? - that is a question that still needs to be answered.