Tag: GRI Standards

GRI publishes guides to foster better disclosure and standards-based policymaking

Stuart Mitchell

With a continued shift towards mandatory sustainability reporting, GRI is supporting global policymakers with an initial set of three new guidance documents. Covering double materiality, due diligence, and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), each publication emphasizes the pertinence of the topic and the significant role played by the globally adopted GRI Standards in helping address them: Double materiality: The interconnectedness of a company’s impacts on society and the environment with its financial performance. GRI reporting prepares companies for double materiality, given impacts are the basis for determining associated financial…

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Voluntary disclosure policies lead global sustainability agenda

Stuart Mitchell

The post-SDG era saw a huge growth in voluntary sustainability disclosure policies: mandatory ones constituted 55.2% pre-2015, whereas post-2015, 64% of global policies are voluntary. According to the 2023 Carrots & Sticks (C&S) report, this global trend is part of a wider proliferation of ESG policies around the world, which includes steady growth in the use of the GRI Standards. C&S 2023 tracks a four-fold increase in the number of sustainability policies since 2020, with the continued shift towards more responsible global governance going hand-in-hand with the rise in corporate…

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More progress still needed on sustainability assurance

Stuart Mitchell

New analysis has revealed two-in-three large companies obtain assurance on at least some of their sustainability disclosures. While a welcome step towards more robust and reliable data, an uneven global picture underlines why GRI is calling for mandatory assurance of sustainability reporting to become normal practice. The State of Play: Sustainability Disclosure and Assurance 2019-2022, published by the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) on 22 February, involved over 1,400 companies from 22 countries. The IFAC findings include: Assurance on some sustainability disclosures is now provided by 69% of companies (a…

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Sustainability standard to accelerate accountability in the mining sector

Stuart Mitchell

A first global standard to holistically address the sustainability impacts of the mining sector is now available. The new GRI Standard reflects broad stakeholder demands for transparency and enables any mining company to use a common set of metrics to report their impacts. GRI 14: Mining Sector 2024 will illuminate how mining organizations are balancing two conflicting truths: the essential nature of their role in providing the minerals that modern societies rely on; and the need for accountability on the harm their operations can cause to the environment, communities and…

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Refreshed governance for global sustainability standard setter

Stuart Mitchell

Three new members have been appointed to the Global Sustainability Standards Board (GSSB), the independent body responsible for developing and setting the GRI Standards.  The GSSB membership is globally diverse and covers five defined constituency groups: business enterprise, investment institutions, labor organizations, mediating institutions, and civil society. This ensures that the GRI Standards, the world’s most widely used sustainability reporting standards, reflect the needs of a multi-stakeholder audience and are developed in the public good. The new additions to the GSSB are: Rebeca Coriat, Head of Stewardship, Lomboard Ordier Investment…

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