Reporting Sustainability
Reporting Sustainability
Reporting Sustainability
What is sustainability?
Industrialization and globalization have changed the context of business, accelerating economic growth and intensifying social and environmental risks and impacts. A sustainability program is the sum total of corporate strategies, policies, goals and initiatives based on drivers of economic, social and environmental risk, return, resources and reputation. Sustainability program ensures that amid environmental, social and even economic uncertainty, an organization is able to adapt and remain viable for the long-term interest of the owners.
Growing relevance of Sustainability reporting
Sustainability reporting as a practice, over the last ten years has evolved from being a fringe one to a mainstream practice. Some of the drivers of the same are
1.There is an increasing volume of queries on sustainability performance of product/services providing organizations from customers and socially responsible investors. In some cases, the RFPs by prospective clients can ask information about sustainability activities of the company, thus making it a part of market access requirement.
2.In not-so-distant future, for a company to be a supplier to corporations such as Walmart, it would need to disclose its performance on parameters such as workers working conditions, greenhouse gas emissions and use of natural resources such as water.
3.Reporting ones performance on sustainability front has a definite marketing value, either intended or intended. It can help in garnering recognition from third parties in form of green/sustainability rankings.
4.As a continuation of a fierce competition in the marketplace on all parameters, competition in public relations is ensuring that information requests such as Carbon Disclosure Project are becoming mainstream means of communicating with conscious investors and public.
5.Activities that are voluntary today can become mandatory by law in future. Proposed ideas such as CSR credits can make sustainability and corporate social responsibility a key governance measure for action and reporting
6.Companies that have good performance in sustainability and reporting it have better ability to attract and retain talent
Global Reporting Initiative
GRI started in the US based nonprofits CERES and the Tellus Institute. It started as a framework for environmental reporting in the early 1990s with the aim of creating an accountability mechanism to ensure companies followed the CERES Principles for responsible environmental conduct. GRI gives the reporting organization a flexibility of choosing the level of compliance to the stipulated guidelines and the checking in form suitable to the organization (self, third party or GRI itself). Across the globe, over 1000 organizations across countries, sectors and scales self declare the use of the GRI Guidelines in their sustainability reports, and a multitude of others use the guidelines on a more informal basis without self-declaration. In India, leading companies such as ITC, Infosys and Dr. Reddy's have their sustainability reports complying GRI guidelines.
An organization should base its sustainability report on GRI's guidelines since
1.Businesses, through their operations have impact on the environment and the society they operate in.
2.Many organizations undertake initiatives, spending significant resources monetary and non-monetary in executing these initiatives.
3.Socially responsible investors such as FMO do follow and stimulate others to use Global Reporting Initiative's G3 guidelines
4.Publishing a report complying G3 guidelines at the GRI forum can give the organization visibility at international level along with the best in class companies across the globe. Such a visibility is a powerful differentiator in the eyes of stakeholders such as investors, suppliers and employees.
We can!
EcoLogic Consultancy can get involved with your organization to enable creation of a sustainable development report (SDR). The framework we can adopt to generate SDR is shown below.
About Us
EcoLogic Consultancy came into existence with the purpose of"To help our clients in understanding, establishing sound Environment Management Systems, and pursuing sustainable business solutions through our various services to abate direct and indirect impact on ecological balance."
We have expertise in the areas of carbon accounting and management, energy management systems, voluntary/compliance carbon markets, environment management and sustainability and carbon branding.
To know more about EcoLogic, please visithttp://www.ecologicconsultancy.in.
To schedule a meeting and discussion with us, do reach us on
Kedar - +91-9000772462 kedar@ecologicconsultancy.in
Indrajeet - +91-9028788430 indrajeet@ecologicconsultancy.in
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