Sustainability Reporting Standards

Standards for Comprehensive Sustainability Reporting

GRI (Global Reporting Initiative): GRI standards remain universally accepted and essentially form the bedrock of corporate sustainability reporting worldwide. The pioneers in sustainability reporting, GRI standards, to some degree, permeate through the reporting requirement directives of most countries. Disclosures are made under social, environmental and economic categories, and companies, depending on their disclosure requirements, can choose whether they want to use the core or comprehensive standards. As of 2020, 73 percent of the world’s largest 250 companies use GRI standards for sustainability reporting.
IIRF (International Integrated Reporting Framework): Mainly targeting investors this framework is used to show how a company creates value, its stakeholder relationships, it’s ethics and culture.
ISO 26000: Aimed at all types of organizations, this standard provides guidelines pertaining to principles and practices concerning social responsibility. Being primarily a guidance rather than requirements based standard, ISO 26000 is not meant for certification or regulatory use.
SASB (Sustainability Accounting Standards Board): An independent U.S. based organization, the SASB provides exhaustive industry-based standards. These standards are based on recognition and disclosure of environmental, social and governance impacts of companies.

Standards for Climate Risk and Emissions Reporting

CDP (Carbon Disclosure Project): Apart from a global reporting and data collection system on companies and their effect on the environment, CDP also provides organizations tools to measure, manage and disclose their emissions, climate risk, and opportunities, and water strategies.

GHG Protocol (Greenhouse Gas Protocol): The go-to tool for greenhouse gas emissions measurement GHG Protocol provides organizations with detailed and multiple standards for greenhouse gas accounting and reporting.

Uniform Standards in sustainability reporting

As legislation, particularly within the EU, works towards bringing in more and more companies under the umbrella of sustainability reporting, the requirement for uniformity in standards is in constant demand. As a consequence, within the EU there is now a new sustainability reporting directive being legislated (read more about Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD)), with new and uniform standards currently being developed by the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG).

Another development is the latest announcement by the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) Foundation at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) announcing the formation of a new ‘standard-setting board’ the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), that will provide globally consistent sustainability reporting standards.