Global Reporting Initiative

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) is the most relevant framework for voluntary reporting on sustainable development performance by business worldwide, making it a [Page 276]key element for green business. First conceptualized as a sustainability reporting framework under the auspices of the Boston-based CERES group, GRI became its own organizational entity in 2001 and moved its headquarters to Amsterdam. Partnering with the United Nations Environment Programme, GRI has since established global sustainability guidelines that have synergies with the United Nations Global Compact and the Earth Charter Initiative. In 2008, 1,044 companies worldwide edited a sustainable development report according to the GRI's guidelines, including firms such as Deloitte Touche (accounting and consulting), Tata (car industry), Sony (equipments), Shell (petroleum), and Novo Nordisk (pharmaceuticals). At the beginning of its development, the GRI was supposed to offer a “win-win” solution for sustainable development, enabling firms to know more about their environmental impact while providing societal groups with information on corporations’ behavior. However, nowadays, the GRI is more a tool for sustainability, trademark management, and reputation building by companies than an instrument of control in the hands of environmental nongovernmental organizations. Considering the short period of time since its launch, there is no doubt that the GRI will continue to be used and developed for better corporate transparency on sustainable development objectives.

Shell is one of over 1,000 companies worldwide that participated in editing a sustainable development report. Shell produces and sells biofuels, as at this station in São Paulo, Brazil

Source: Shell

Initially, the creation of the GRI was based on three principles. The first one is that corporate reporting, as an attempt to provide data on industrial externalities, encourages good corporate behavior and, therefore, ameliorates economic results. The information contained in corporate reports is able to empower societal actors that demand appropriate sustainable performance from companies. The power of information disclosure is a key principle behind the GRI, acting as a potential instrument of civil regulation.

Second, at the time of its creation, the GRI wanted not only to enforce the logic of reporting for corporations worldwide, but also to innovate in proposing evaluation standards to measure business environmental impact, in the same way as financial performance was already subject to corporate reports. The second principle of GRI was to extend corporate reporting beyond financial performance, to render environmental and social objectives as visible as economic ones.

The third objective of GRI was to harmonize the field of corporate reporting. Indeed, many codes of conduct have been produced in the last two decades by individual firms, business associations, or intergovernmental organizations—one of the most well known being the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's guidelines for multinational companies. In parallel to these initiatives, GRI's major contribution to the field of reporting was to propose a participatory, multistakeholder process for international guidelines in order to harmonize the confusing domain of corporate reporting.

[Page 277]Based on these three principles, historically, the GRI was in 1997 the result of the mobilization of economic actors, in particular, the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies (CERES) in the United States. This coalition based in Boston, Massachusetts, gathered firms, investors, labor, environmental, religious, and public interest groups. The model proposed by CERES was based on the well-established U.S. financial reporting system. However, CERES sought to expand its scope from only social concerns to economic and environmental performance indicators in accordance with the triple bottom line principle, to give it a global impact, and to go deeper into its multistakeholder basis.

...