GRI and PRI collaborate for action on the SDGs  Tweet This!

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), the world’s leading provider of sustainability reporting standards, and Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), the world’s most important responsible investment initiative,  joined forces to promote responsible investment and business action on the SDGs.

The collaboration between the two organizations, at both a strategic and technical level, is aimed to:

• support GRI’s and PRI’s efforts to align sustainability reporting by businesses with investor expectations, mobilizing capital flows in the direction of sustainable business solutions
• promote projects that support the widespread adoption of sustainability reporting, and
• support reporting on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by both businesses and investors

As SDGs will need a $5-7 trillion annual investment, the mobilization of mainstream capital is highly important, with corporations reporting according to the GRI Sustainability Reporting Standards and investors who have signed up to PRI’s six principles representing a significant segment of global capital flows.

According to Tim Mohin, GRI’s Chief Executive, actual progress will only be achieved by aligning “capital investment with sustainable business practices”, ensuring that “sustainability disclosures are decision-useful for all stakeholders, including investors”.

About PRI

• Supported by the United Nations, PRI is the leading global advocate of responsible investment, striving to assist its global network of investor signatories with integrating environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues into investment decisions.
• PRI has introduced, in order to promote the incorporation of ESG considerations into investment practices, six voluntary Principles for Responsible Investment, with over 1,750 signatories from more than 50 countries, representing around US$70 trillion.

About GRI

Having pioneered sustainability reporting since the late 1990s, GRI provides the world’s most widely used standards for sustainability reporting, striving to empower decision makers everywhere – businesses, governments, civil society and citizens –  to take action towards a more sustainable economy and world.

Key facts

• 80% of the world’s 250 largest companies issue Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reports using GRI’s Sustainability Reporting Standards
• Under the terms of a Memorandum of Understanding signed in 2010, the UN Global Compact adopts the GRI sustainability reporting guidelines as the recommended reporting framework for companies to communicate on progress made
• GRI’s Certified Training Courses are offered by 89 training partners in 54 countries

References:

This article was compiled using information at the links below. For the sake of readability, we did not use brackets or ellipses but made sure that the extra or missing words did not change the publication’s meaning. If you would like to quote these written sources from the original please revert to the links below:

https://www.globalreporting.org/information/news-and-press-center/Pages/GRI%E2%80%99s-collaboration-with-PRI-boosts-responsible-investment-and-action-towards-the-SDGs.aspx?dm_i=1VZV,57X81,C5W579,K373O,1

https://www.unpri.org/about

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While the research stresses that businesses should not rely solely on government intervention to address major sustainability topics such as climate change, it draws attention to international initiatives guiding companies in dealing with – and communicating their performance on – environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues, including:

• the UN’s Principles for Responsible Investment (UN PRI), to which over 1,600 investment organizations have committed;
• the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) in the U.S., developing sustainability accounting standards and a materiality matrix identifying, for businesses, key sustainability issues;
• the UN’s Sustainable Stock Exchange Initiative, aimed at the creation of more sustainable capital markets through the collaboration with stock exchanges.

According to MIT SMR and BCG’s research, companies should take certain key steps in developing sustainable business practices  Tweet This!, including the following:

• The importance of a sustainability strategy: while 90 per cent of executives consider sustainability as important, only 60 per cent of businesses have a sustainability strategy in place, despite the great significance of having a real sustainability strategy fully embedded into a company’s business strategy. The survey also found that the percentage of companies with a sustainability strategy increased in Europe, Latin America and Australia.
• Concentrating on material issues: businesses focused on material issues, with their sustainability efforts directly connected to material business issues, reported up to 50 per cent extra profit from sustainability – successfully connecting strategic necessity to strategic opportunity.
• Organizing your business properly in order to achieve your measurable objectives: building sustainability into business units doubles the likelihood of your organization profiting from its sustainability initiatives.
• Building a business case for sustainable business practices: although 60 per cent of companies had a sustainability strategy, only 25 per cent had developed a clear business case regarding their sustainability efforts.

References:

This article was compiled using a report by MIT Sloan Management Review (MIT SMR) and The Boston Consulting Group (BCG). For the sake of readability, we did not use brackets or ellipses but made sure that the extra or missing words did not change the report’s meaning. If you would like to quote these written sources from the original please revert to the link below:

http://marketing.mitsmr.com/offers/SU2017/58480-MITSMR-BCG-Sustainability-Report-2017.pdf?utm_source=Publicaster&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=susrpt17&utm_content=Corporate+Sustainability+at+a+Crossroads&cid=1

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