A young child participates in a plant workshop organized by UNDP Peru and FAO in Ayacucho, Peru. Credit: UNDP Peru

By Peter Paul van de Wijs
AMSTERDAM, the Netherlands, Apr 27 2021 (IPS)

Last week, the world marked Earth Day – an opportunity to put the spotlight on the pressing needs of our planet, in the face of ever-growing impacts by humanity, and galvanize action to change practices and behavior. Yet these issues were not, and cannot be, addressed in a single day. Resolve and action to protect the environment is a 365 days-a-year endeavor.

The accumulating corporate contribution to the damaging impacts on the Earth – by businesses and other organizations – is significant. Therefore, the role of companies, in participating in solutions that safeguard the natural environment, are also crucial.

To identify and recognize how a company is impacting on the sustainability of the Earth, the starting point is transparency. The GRI Standards – the world’s most widely for sustainability reporting – offer any organization a common language for communicating their impacts on people and planet.

So, what is the role of GRI, through reporting, in catalyzing action by organizations, large and small, to safeguard the environment?

I spoke to Bastian Buck, GRI Chief of Standards, and Marco van der Ree, GRI Chief Development Officer, to find out more.

Q: The theme of Earth Day 2021 was, ‘Together, we can prevent the coming disasters of climate change and environmental destruction. Together, we can Restore Our Earth’. This is a significant ask. How can sustainability reporting support the required action – by companies, governments or other organizations?

Marco: We know the planet is in serious distress and organizations need to understand their impact – positive and negative – on the planet. GRI reporting essentially provides them with a ‘risk map’, so they can identify where they have impacts and consequently what action they need to take.

Bastian: Communicating their impact through our Standards enables companies to have important, timely societal dialogues with their stakeholders – including customers, investors, civil society and governments. What sustainability reporting does is to provide information that is critical in decision-making processes, internal and external to the company. helping companies and stakeholders determine their role in this transitional moment in the global debate on how to restore our planet.

Bastian Buck

Bastian: Disclosure on environmental impacts has always been at the core of the GRI Standards and our standard setting activities. What they also do is address the corresponding societal topics that cannot be ignored, if organizations are to fully understand and change how they impact on the environment. Progress to net zero by 2050 or stopping biodiversity loss, for example, have broader societal impacts and that’s why comprehensive sustainability reporting is needed that gives a holistic picture.

Marco: GRI cover topics that range from biodiversity to energy, water to emissions – all of which help companies understand their environmental impact. We don’t stand still and regularly update or add new Standards, as guided by changing societal expectations on good corporate behavior. For example, in 2020 our new Waste Standard launched, which seeks to enable companies move away from the ‘take make waste’ model and embrace circular practices.

Q: Recent research from KPMG indicates that the number of companies conducting sustainability reporting rises year on year. Most larger companies now do so – with a majority choosing to use the GRI Standards. What is the biggest challenge to continuing to spread the practice of reporting, and what’s the benefit of using a common standard?

Marco van der Ree

Bastian: We need mandatory sustainability reporting – across as many jurisdictions as possible and addressing as many themes as possible. The recent moves we are seeing in the EU offer encouragement that change is happening. We have come a long way through promoting voluntary disclosure, and different regions and nations will move at a different pace. However, we should not lose sight of the vision of mandatory, global sustainability standards that apply to all.

Q: GRI says that it provides the Standards as a ‘free public good’. What does this actually mean and, given that standards development is a costly activity, how can GRI continue to update and deliver globally relevant sustainability standards?

Marco: GRI wants all organizations to have free access to the Standards so that there are no barriers to access – and therefore no barriers to embracing transparency. Last year, we created the Global Standards Fund to bring together a group of funders from governments, corporates, foundations and individuals who are passionate about supporting the Standards.

If you think of the multiplication effect of a sustainability standard, the impact of the investment in updating it goes a long way. For example, we estimate that updating the GRI Biodiversity Standard will cost 350,000 Euro. On the one hand, a local conservation project might be able to safeguard a few hectares of rainforest, for a limited time, with these funds. Yet an improved Biodiversity Standard, freely available to all, can help improve the practices of thousands of companies around the world.

Q: Finally, what is your personal motivation for working for GRI and in the field of sustainability reporting? What was your career journey to get to this point?

Bastian: I joined GRI 15 years ago because I believe that sustainability reporting, and the dialogue and action that it enables, is essential if we are move away from environmentally harmful business models. Reporting is a key tool in the transition. Therefore, in 2021, the GRI Standards are more important than ever before.

Marco: I have worked in sustainable development around the world for 25 years, starting out with managing socio-environmental community projects in Brazil. From these early beginnings, I realized that we can only protect this Earth by working together. If businesses change their behavior and take responsibility for their impacts, they can become truly sustainable. The GRI Standards provide a clear pathway for companies to do just that.

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By Peter Paul van de Wijs
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands, Apr 13 2020 (IPS)

In recent days we have seen the understandable decision reached to postpone the UN climate change conference – COP26 – which was due to take place this November. As the world reels from the widespread impacts of the coronavirus crisis, it is the right call.

COVID-19 is a pressing global issue that is starting to strain health systems, cut down economic output and undermine efforts to address poverty and inequality. These are challenges that, in the coming months, will need concerted and collaborative effort between and within nations to overcome.

But what does this mean for one of the most enduring and universal challenges we face – that of climate change? The delay of COP26 until 2021 does not mean that efforts by countries to meet their climate change commitments have to be on hold. Far from it.

Fulfilling Paris Agreement promises

As with coronavirus, climate change is a significant cause of reduced outcomes for health and wealth around the world. We know that the consequences of climate change continue to escalate, disproportionately impacting communities that have contributed the least to the problem of carbon emissions, with devasting effects on the environment and global biodiversity.

So, while the COP26 global gathering of opinion formers and climate change experts won’t take place this autumn in Scotland, there can be no delay or dialling back of ambition when it comes to climate action. Indeed, if countries are to fulfill the promises made in the Paris Agreement we need levels of ambition to grow.

A green transition in the COVID-19 recovery?

Even as countries strive to contain and mitigate the COVID-19 crisis, we cannot lose sight of this. That’s why climate action needs to be kept in the mainstream of political discussions – and even consider how the recovery phase of the pandemic, when it comes, can be implemented in a way that supports a green transition.

Peter Paul van de Wijs

The European Commission has been forthright already, with Executive Vice-President Frans Timmermans stating on 1 April that, when it comes to addressing climate change, “we will not slow down our work domestically or internationally”. That position is welcome – and one we need the world’s other major economies to echo.

Business input to the solution

Efforts by governments to tackle climate change need to include greater engagement of the private sector. Businesses have a huge role in helping reduce carbon emissions and contributing towards solutions. That’s why sustainable business practices need to be front and center of corporate efforts to realign the way they operate, both now and in the aftermath of the pandemic.

Indeed, contributing to climate change mitigation makes sense to companies from both environmental and economic standpoints. So-called sustainable investing has been on the rise for some time – and the current crisis is demonstrating why ESG (environmental, social and governance) factors are increasingly important to major investors.

Business resilience, continuity planning, community engagement and employee rights – these are all ESG risks to be managed. Responsible companies, that are transparent about their practices and take obligations to people and the planet seriously, stand to benefit.

Understanding impacts can drive improvement

GRI is the independent and multi-stakeholder organization that provides the most widely used sustainability reporting framework, the GRI Standards. And during this testing period, we are continuing to help companies to disclose their impacts and support governments to collaborate with the private sector in fulfilling national climate change commitments.

This includes engaging business in the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), which articulate the efforts by individual countries to cut emissions and adapt to climate change.

The NDCs are central to the implementation of the Paris Agreement, with all new or updated NDCs requiring to be submitted this year. While acknowledging the huge challenges many governments face as a result of coronavirus, we cannot let this timetable slip.

In a very short space of time, the impact of COVID-19 has sent shockwaves around the world. When it comes to climate change, the risks are longer-term, more diffused and harder to quantify.

Yet they remain real and more volatile than ever. Future generations will look back on 2020 as a year when the global community either stepped up or fell short. Let’s ensure this year of crisis brings out the best in us and we do not let them down.

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Credit: UN Global Compact

By Peter Paul van de Wijs
AMSTERDAM, the Netherlands, Feb 21 2020 (IPS)

This year marks just ten years ahead of the deadline for completing the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.

These universally supported targets were always ambitious in their scope – yet what is clearer now than ever before is that quicker progress is crucial in the decade to come.

If the world stays on the same pace as the past five years, the goals will not be met with worrying and serious consequences.

When launched in 2015, the SDGs ushered in a new era of global development objectives to address the world’s most pressing problems.

At GRI, we have been closely involved in the SDGs from the very early stages – because we know that increasing the participation of business is a principle driver in achieving the progress needed to reach these goals.

Over the past five years, GRI has collaborated extensively with the UN Global Compact (UNGC) and others to recognize and assess the crucial role of transparency and corporate reporting as a driver for measuring and encouraging progress towards the SDGs.

Peter Paul van de Wijs

This year will see a number of new projects to further support this work. That includes the new addition of Examples of Corporate SDG Reporting Practices to the resources from GRI, which is focused around 14 sets of examples on how businesses have measured and disclosed SDGs impacts.

These examples are now freely available to assist companies and other stakeholders, including aligning the SDGs with business strategy.

The highlighted examples recognize that, in different markets and global locations, there are lessons to be learned and shared.

Companies included represent a broad array of countries: Brazil, Denmark, France, Italy, Kenya, Mexico, Philippines. Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, UK and USA.

Likewise, they are drawn from many different sectors, including chemicals, construction, consumer goods, cosmetics, food & drink, energy, real estate, and telecommunications.

The examples cover key themes that are globally relevant for businesses, such as:

• • How to disclose SDGs impacts in the value chain;

• • Engaging stakeholders in prioritizing SDGs; and

• Understanding interconnections between the SDGS and corporate objectives and KPIs.

These practical examples complement the existing guidance developed by the GRI-UNGC Business Reporting on the SDGs Action Platform. This resource covers three areas:

• 1.

Analysis of the SDGs goals and targets

• 2.

A guide for integrating the SDGs into corporate reporting

• 3.

How to address investor needs in SDGs business reporting

Meanwhile, we are at the midway point in an engagement project in partnership with Enel, which has involved gathering perspectives from business and policy representatives to set a vision for how reporting and partnerships can advance corporate input for the SDGs.

A series of interactive, online forums in the second half of 2019 provided input on the changes needed. The next stage will see this work inform regional dialogue events later this year, to translate the lessons learned into action.

Looking ahead, we’re excited to be launching the SDGs Corporate Tracker project in Colombia, developed with the Technical Secretariat of the ODS Commission in Colombia, the UN Development Programme and Business Call to Action.

This bold and collaborative approach see equal involvement from the private sector, civil society, academia and governments around the principle that collective action is the only way to achieve sustainability and advance the SDGs.

The corporate tracker platform helps measure business contributions to the SDGs and was built based on the experience of the first pilot project in Colombia in 2018.

This project mined and aggregated private sector data on selected SDGs, which informed the Voluntary National Review presented by Colombia to the UN to show their progress. We are exploring opportunities for similar projects in the African and South Asia regions.

Stay tuned for more on this work and other initiatives in the coming months, as part of GRI’s continued wide-ranging action and commitments as a global catalyst for increasing corporate input and ambition to support the SDGs.

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By Peter Paul van de Wijs
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands, Nov 26 2019 (IPS)

Unanimously endorsed by the UN Human Rights Council in 2011, the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights are the authoritative global reference point articulating the responsibilities of companies to respect and protect human rights.

The UN Forum on Business and Human Rights meets this week in Geneva, where the theme is ‘governments as catalysts for business respect for human rights’. The Forum is an important opportunity to assess the progress nation states have made towards meeting their duty under the Guiding Principles, through the implementation of National Action Plans (NAPs) on Business and Human Rights.

The need for strengthened transparency

So, how are governments doing so far through their NAPs? An analysis by GRI – the international organization that helps governments and organizations understand and communicate their impacts – finds there is plenty of room for improvement.

We have reviewed the 23 NAPs produced by countries so far, which has identified that much more needs to be done by governments to help businesses understand, mitigate and improve their human rights impacts.

Strengthening transparency and reporting requirements is required, if governments are to stimulate the changes needed in business behavior. Our analysis found wide divergence in how countries set out expectations and provide support for businesses to effectively disclose and manage human rights risks.

Recommendations for change

GRI has singled out ten key recommendations, providing governments with practical advice on how their NAPs can use corporate reporting to improve their effectiveness.

While primarily aimed at governments drafting or updating their NAPs, these recommendations are also relevant to other stakeholders, including businesses, civil society, and research and national human rights institutions.

We identify that the NAPs need to:

1. Require public reporting on human rights impacts based on internationally recognized standards;
2. Clarify that companies should both disclose their human rights impacts and how they are managing them;
3. Include concrete targets and timelines to increase human rights reporting;
4. Use sustainability reporting data as part of a transparent monitoring process;
5. Be inclusive of the reporting by all businesses, including SMEs and state-owned enterprises;
6. Consider incentives for companies to increase and improve their reporting;
7. Provide support to companies through awareness raising and capacity building;
8. Include guidance that clearly explains reporting requirements;
9. Foster collaborations and partnerships between the state, companies and civil society;
10. And finally, clearly specify who is responsible for taking action.

Peter Paul van de Wijs

Improved accountability through reporting

When it comes to human rights, the old phrase ‘what you don’t know won’t hurt you’ could not be further from the truth. The reality is that understanding how businesses can contribute towards fulfilling the aims of the UN Guiding Principles is impossible without clarity on how individual companies are performing, from a sustainability standpoint.

And that’s why our number one recommendation to governments is to improve reporting through requiring the use of international disclosure frameworks based on a multi-stakeholder and independent standard-setting process.

Experience shows the duty of governments to protect human rights cannot be fully realized through voluntary guidelines or self-regulation by companies alone.

Globally relevant disclosure standards

The GRI Standards, the world’s most widely adopted sustainability reporting framework, provide a cornerstone for any company seeking to be transparent about their impacts – and human rights are an important thread throughout.

Human rights impacts are addressed through GRI’s universal Standards – which every organizations that reports through GRI must use – as well as topic-specific Standards on child labor, and forced or compulsory labor. Yet we’re not standing still.

GRI is currently carrying out a review to see how we can further improve the positioning of human rights, which may include the development of new Standards or disclosures. We do this through an inclusive and multi-stakeholder approach, taking on board views from all parties.

This will include input from policy makers, NGOs, UN and human rights organizations – and, of course, businesses themselves.

We need smart solutions

No single initiative by governments and businesses will be able provide the comprehensive monitoring, mitigation and protection of human rights that is required. What we need is a ‘smart mix’ of policy measures – voluntary and mandatory, national and international.

It’s only through concerted effort and collaboration that we will be able to ensure the improved human rights reporting that will ultimately underpin the success of the UN Guiding Principles. GRI, through our mission to drive up corporate transparency and accountability standards around the world, is determined to be a part of the solution.

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By Peter Paul van de Wijs
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands, Jul 30 2019 (IPS)

We all know that the UN Sustainable Development Goals are ambitious and will take huge collaborative and international effort to achieve. Government action alone is not enough. So how can the private sector actively contribute – and what can be done to ramp up the participation of businesses around the world?

Finding answers to these questions is at the heart of a new initiative, launched this month by GRI, the sustainability reporting standard setter, and global power company Enel. Titled ‘Driving corporate action towards accomplishing the SDGs’, it will seek solutions by engaging businesses, policy makers and NGOs.

The project links two of the requirements that apply to all member states under the SDGs. These are to encourage companies to adopt sustainable practices and report sustainability information (set out within goal 12); and strengthening global partnerships between the private sector, government and civil society (goal 17).

From the inception of the SDGs, GRI has championed the participation of the private sector in measuring and achieving progress. In fact, we believe this is a crucial contributing factor to the overall success of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

That’s because, through engaging in reporting on the SDGs and embedding this within corporate disclosures, businesses are encouraged to adopt more sustainable ways of working. Yet we need to encourage more companies to get on board. While there are good examples from around the world, a complete picture is lacking. So, more needs to be done to strengthen collaboration and translate these partnerships into measurable impact.

Agreement on the pressing need to address these issues led to the partnership between GRI and Enel, with phase one now underway. At the center of this work are online collaboration forums where anyone can sign up to participate, free of charge. Each of these 90-minute sessions will be led by a diverse panel of experts, convened by GRI and Enel.

The forums will get under the skin of what is already happening to support business engagement in the SDGs – and where more help is needed. Taking place at times that accommodate those in different time zones, we are seeking widespread and international participation.

The online sessions will take place in October and November and are hosted by insights and strategy consultancy GlobeScan. The findings will feed into a series of regional events in 2020.

#ActNow for a better future for all

Participants in the forums will be asked to share their perspectives on the current state of affairs and help develop a vision on how companies and governments should work together.
Questions to be addressed will include:

• • • How has reporting by the private sector enhanced the implementation of the SDGs?

• • • What’s the role of the SDGs in contributing to business strategy?

• • • Has reporting increased the understanding of the opportunities and threats related to the topics covered by the SDGs?

• • How has involvement by businesses in the SDGs led to new partnerships or different ways of working?

Following each of the forums, a report covering the main outputs will be published so that a wider audience can engage in the trends, initiatives and challenges that have been discussed – with the aim of inspiring others to get involved.

Based on these reports, phase two of the project will see four regional events taking place around the world next year, where key findings from the research will be shared. These will focus on practical learning and action that encourage companies to engage in SDG reporting and make the transition to more sustainable business models by engaging in partnerships and collaboration.

All of this activity builds up to the pivotal 2020 UN High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, which will mark the five-year milestone for the SDGs when the world will take stock of progress made.

What is clear is that without the involvement of an engaged private sector, the SDGs will fall short. There is therefore both an urgent opportunity and necessity to increase the momentum and stimulate greater business engagement in the SDGs. That is why we need as many organizations as possible to get involved in the project.

At its heart, this work is about understanding how businesses, governments and other organizations each can play their part in contributing towards the success of the SDGs. Ultimately, this can help us navigate the route to a more sustainable future, which will benefit companies, communities and the planet.

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