What is it about?
We perform in this paper an analysis of more than 40 global companies that achieved the highest quality level of GRI reporting for 5consecutive years. The 40 companies belong to the mining, automotive, utilities, energy and petroleum industry, and have all maintained an A+ GRI Application Level over the last 6 years of their reporting. We compare their carbon emissions over 6-year data to a control group of 24 similar companies that did not use GRI reporting. We found no difference in emissions between the two groups. In fact we find, that the GRI group overall slightly increased their emission over the 5 years, while both groups reduced their emissions intensity by about the same 16%. We attribute this decrease to the switch to cheaper and cleaner natural gas than to any other environmental measures by either group. This work is the first of its kind to investigate quantitatively, and using rigorous statistical methods, the correlation between GRI reporting and carbon emissions performance.
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Why is it important?
The lack of any correlation between GRI reporting, which often consists of the lion share of corporate social responsibility (CSR) investment, and any material improvement in CO2 performance, suggests that the current CSR strategies are futile as far as environmental sustainability is concerned, and hence need to be drastically modified.
Perspectives
We strongly recommend in this paper two major new developments: 1- On the reporting side, we recommend moving from Sustainability Reports to Sustainability Statements, that are similar in their formats, transparency, materiality, context and comparability to Financial Statements. While GRI G4 and GRI Standards has moved somewhat in this direction, it still does not come even close to enabling the above 5 criteria and hence continue to leave the door open to extensive "green washing". 2- We also propose setting thresholds and targets to key performance indicators that are tied to the national reduction targets in a way that established a clear line of sight between the national targets and the performance of each company relative to those targets. This would allow policy makers to easily differentiate between the companies that are meeting those targets and those that are not, and hence devise appropriate policies.
Lotfi Belkhir
McMaster University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Does GRI reporting impact environmental sustainability? A cross-industry analysis of CO2 emissions performance between GRI-reporting and non-reporting companies, Management of Environmental Quality An International Journal, March 2017, Emerald,
DOI: 10.1108/meq-10-2015-0191.
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