GUIDELINES


Global Reporting Initiative
http://www.globalreporting.org
The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) is an independent institution whose mission is to develop and disseminate internationally agreed-upon guidelines for sustainability reporting.

Download the GRI Sustainability Reporting Guidelines here:
http://www.globalreporting.org/guidelines/2002.asp

Download the Guidelines in Spanish and Portuguese here:
http://www.globalreporting.org/guidelines/translations.asp


Cement Sustainability Initiative of the WBCSD
http://www.wbcsdcement.org
The CSI has developed a protocol as a tool for cement companies worldwide. It provides a harmonized methodology for calculating CO2 emissions, with a view to reporting these emissions for various purposes. It addresses all direct and the main indirect sources of CO2 emissions related to the cement manufacturing process in absolute as well as specific or unit-based terms.

Download the Guidelines (CO2 Accounting and Reporting Standard for the Cement Industry) here:
http://www.wbcsd.org/web/publications/cement-tf1.pdf


Ethos Indicators for Corporate Social Responsibility (Version 2005)
http://www.ethos.org.br
Brazil-based Ethos Institute prepared Latin America's most advanced indicators on corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance. The Guidelines allow managers to translate CSR concepts into practice. The Indicators also integrate the principles of the UN's Global Compact and the Millennium Development Goals and examines the interface between the Ethos indicators and this other strategic tools such as the Guidelines of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), SAI Social Accountability International (SAI; SA8000 Standard) and Accountability (AA1000 Standard). The document seeks to identify synergies between the Ethos Indicators and other international tools to make it easier for managers to use them in an integrated manner.

Download the indicators (English, Spanish, and Portuguese) http://www.ethos.org.br/docs/conceitos_praticas/indicadores/download/


"Balanço Social" Site - Instituto Brasileiro de Análises Sociais de Econômicas (Ibase)
http://www.balancosocial.org.br
A "balanço social" is a social audit or business statement published every year in which Brazilian companies report information about social projects, benefits and actions. It includes environmental expenditures. The Statement is addressed to employees, investors, market analysts, shareholders, and the community.

Download the Balanço Social- Ibase Model here (in Portuguese):
http://www.balancosocial.org.br/cgi/cgilua.exe/sys/start.htm


Greenhouse Gas Protocol Initiative
http://www.ghgprotocol.org
Established by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and the World Resources Institute (WRI), the GHG Protocol promote internationally-accepted accounting and reporting standards for greenhouse gas emissions from companies.

Download Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard (Revised 2004 Version)
http://www.ghgprotocol.org/resources_and_documentation/corpinventory2.htm

If you do not see your institution listed below or if you notice that a key document on reporting is missing, please contact us at monica.araya@yale.edu. We welcome your feedback.

INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

AccountAbility
http://www.accountability.org.uk
This international member developed a framework (AA1000) that companies use to establish a systematic stakeholder engagement process that generates indicators, targets, and reporting systems. It has produced several publications on sustainability reporting and assurance.

Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA)
http://www.acca.co.uk/sustainability/awards/
This global accountancy body has members from 160 countries. ACCA is involved in sustainability reporting award schemes in more than 20 countries, including Europe, Africa, and the Asia Pacific region.

Business for Social Responsibility (BSR)
http://www.bsr.org
Since 1992, Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) has worked with companies to engage in responsible social and environmental practices. BSR offers resources to its member companies to design and implement socially responsible business policies, practices, and processes. Their annual conferences include specialized workshops on sustainability reporting challenges and opportunities. BSR also works with numerous other CSR organizations throughout the world, Accion RSE (Chile) and Instituto Ethos (Brazil). BSR is a founding member of Forum EMPRESA (www.empresa.org), a network of CSR organizations in the Americas.

Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies (CERES)
http://www.ceres.org
Founded in 1989, U.S.-based CERES is a coalition of environmental groups, socially responsible investors and public pension funds. They have been pioneers in the US in the promotion of standardized corporate environmental reporting. Companies that endorse the CERES Principles commit to continuous improvement of their environmental management and reporting. CERES also helped launch the Global Reporting Initiative and now encourages CERES endorsers and other companies to use the GRI guidelines for reporting. Since, CERES actively work on “climate risk” disclosure as part of the Investor Network on Climate Risk (www.incr.com), a group created to promote better understanding of the risks of climate change among institutional investors.

Corporate Register
www.corporateregister.com
CorporateRegister.com is the largest electronic database of the environmental, social, and sustainability reports published around the world.

Ethical Corporation
www.ethicalcorp.com
This UK-based organization publishes information, news, trends, and developments in the field of corporate responsibility from around the world. It covers sustainability reporting regularly and produces the Ethical Corporation Magazine.

Global Environmental Management Initiative (GEMI)
http://www.gemi.org
US-based GEMI is a managers-driven initiative involving leading corporations that promote good environmental, health and safety practices. GEMI created a reporting toolkit for managers that provides guidance for companies that are seek to address transparency-related risks and opportunities (See Transparency: A Path to Public Trust in our Surveys & Analysis Section).

Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)
www.globalreporting.org
The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) is an independent institution whose mission is to develop and disseminate internationally-agreed guidelines for sustainability reporting.

OneReport
http://www.one-report.com/
This is a global electronic reporting network that enables companies to report their social, environmental, economic, and corporate governance information to investors, the financial community, and other stakeholders.

SustainAbility
www.sustainability.com
This British consulting group has - among other things - ranked environmental and sustainability reports around the world for over a decade. In 2004, for the first time, a Latin American company (Natura, Brazil) was ranked as a Top 50 global sustainability reporter.

World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD)
http://www.wbcsd.org
The WBCSD is a coalition of 175 international companies that promote business practices that promote “economic growth, ecological balance and social progress.” Member companies are drawn from over 35 countries and 20 major industrial sectors. WBCSD has created a global network of national and regional business councils and partner organizations involving some 1,000 business leaders globally. Their most recent document “Beyond Reporting” is available in our Surveys & Analysis Section). This document is part of the WBCSD Accountability and Reporting Project that started in 2002 involving 60 member companies.

• The quality of corporate reports on social and environmental responsibilities may have risen, but often reporting companies fail to meet the expectations of a key target group: the financial services sector, with its associated analysts, investors and shareholders. This is one of the main findings of the Global Stakeholder Report 2005. It includes the views of 500 global readers of sustainability reports from 58 countries. The study found that, although the importance of social and environmental issues within the financial services sector has increased considerably in the past few years, it is this group which gets the least from sustainability reports. According to the survey, the prime reason for this disparity is that the economic arguments for corporate sustainability and social commitments are not convincingly explained in the documents.

• According the study, companies selling autos in the European Union are not disclosing carbon dioxide reduction commitments or strategies to comply with a seven-year-old the European Automobile Manufacturers Association Agreement (ECEA) that was signed in 1998 between the manufacturers association, the auto companies, and the European Commission.
• The authors suggest that two aspects of the ACEA Agreement have not been disclosed to the public:
  
  • Individual company commitments to achieve targets
  • Data on company CO2 performance

• KPMG was assessed the state of corporate responsibility reporting among the GFT250 as well as for the top 100 companies (N100) in XX countries. Similar surveys were held in 1993, 1996, 1999, and 2002.
• 52 % of the GFT250 (and 33 % of the N100) companies published a separate CR report, compared to 45 % and 22 %, respectively, in 2002. There has been an increase of the N100 companies that publish CR information as part of their annual reports.
• Of the top 100 companies in each of the XX countries surveyed, Japan has the highest percentage (80 %) of companies producing CR reports, followed by the UK (71%).

• One of the conclusions is that “Many companies have focused on a narrow set of audiences and as a result, they have left shareholder value on the table by failing to turn emerging challenges from society into opportunities.”
• "Finding business value in accountability demands a shift in thinking, to push an organization through its metaphorical "tipping point" so that enough people understand the language of sustainable development and the business it can provide" (Ibid).
• "Three action points are recommended to CEOs: (1) "Tell people what accountability means for you - personally" (2) Give the sustainability brief to a commercial high flyer who can connect different functions and business", and (3) Create incentives that reward convergent, not divergent behavior."

• " The author explains why we observe an ongoing "reporting renaissance" and argues that the latter is irreversible because a commitment to transparency will be integral to doing business and retaining the license to operate in the coming decades.
• If wisely managed, high-quality non-financial reporting creates value. In contrast, reporting laggards will increasingly find that stakeholder patience “will wear thin, sooner or later.”
• Non-financial reporting is still in a “pre-adolescence” that is characterized by experimentation and learning. He proposes two major scenarios and suggests that regardless of which one (or a hybrid) takes place, several parallel developments seem inevitable, including:


o integration of financial and non-financial reporting,
o development of metrics to measure environmental, social, and economic performance accurately, and
o progress on sectoral initiatives.

• There are 1,500 to 2,000 companies producing reports worldwide & #8212; they are mainly large firms.
• State-owned enterprises and small companies have yet to adopt non-financial reporting practices. The main inhibiting factor is the cost involved in producing the report.
• There has been a notable increase in the quality of disclosure. But, companies still fail to cover relevant, core business issues. Many reports do not cover important issues such as sector-specific impacts, dependence on fossil fuels, human rights, and labor issues.
• The Americas: Reporting has reached a plateau in recent years following steep growth between 1990 and 1995. Between 2001 and 2003 almost 2/3 of reports from the Americas were published in the US with a third published in Canada. Reports from South America account for only 6% of the total published reports.

• This publications focuses on transparency related challenges and opportunities. The target audiences are environmental managers. It offers a five-step process designed to assist in the identification of transparency-related opportunities and risks, determining the business case for action, and help a company develop and implement an effective transparency strategy.

• The survey presents an increasingly positive assessment of non-financial reporting practices, though it also identifies major gaps in the reports. On the positive side, the Top 50 rankings has a major influx of new entrants. Some companies have made massive progress in responding to demands for improved transparency on key issues of corporate responsibility.
• On the negative side, the survey reveals that most companies still fail to identify material risks and opportunities associated with the economic, social and environmental impacts.
• According to SustainAbility "The financial sector - including insurers, reinsurers, lenders, investors and analysts - is beginning to wake up to a range of non-financial issues. Even the best current non-financial reporting by companies may not yet meet their needs, but the convergence of the financial and non-financial worlds is now under way." (p.4)

• This report explains why and how reporting can help turn the wave of boardroom scandals into renewed boardroom trust. It offers guidance for managers regarding the production of reports and offers insights into the reporting standardization debate.
• The report's main purpose is to help companies to understand the added value of sustainability reporting. It also provides guidance, both to the initiated and the uninitiated, on how to report, thus complementing other initiatives guiding companies on reporting.

• As the title suggests, this document offers managers an overview of the practice of environmental reporting. It discusses the major benefits that accrue to companies from adopting high-quality reporting practices.

• The document offers an overview on corporate responsibility trends in Spain. One of the chapters focuses on corporate transparency and status of Global Reporting Initiative among Spanish companies.