Global Reporting Initiative: North-American G4 Campaign Kick-off

“The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) is a non-profit organization that promotes economic, environmental and social sustainability. GRI provides all companies and organizations with a comprehensive sustainability reporting framework that is widely used around the world.”  This is how they describe themselves.  To the business community the GRI is the standard in which to determine one’s own sustainability accounting, measure progress and compare efforts to other companies.  It was established in 1997, with the first version of the guidelines being released in 2000.  The fourth version of the guidelines will be released in Amsterdam this May, but I had an opportunity to get a “sneak peak” at some of the revisions. The meeting took place at the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday. G4, or version 4, will provide a framework for more reliable and relevant information that ties to materiality in the financial context.  The intent is not to ask for more information, but for it to be more focused.  There will also be more focus on the “G” in ES&G (Environmental, Social, Governance) as it was discussed “how can we trust that the ES data is accurate if we don’t know how it is governed?”  After the G4 Update, I attended the GRI Master Class which was presented by representatives of Deloitte’s External Assurance practice, Bloomberg and HP along with GRI Focal Point USA.  www.globalreporting.org