The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) produces globally recognized sustainability reporting frameworks and offers tools to help organizations set goals, measure progress, and manage sustainability performance. Read this article that gives an overview of the GRI and its reporting guidelines.

How does an organization begin to approach measuring sustainability improvements? How can these be compared to other organizations and communicated with transparency and trust to stakeholders?

Global Reporting Initiative

The Global Reporting Initiative (known as GRI) is an international independent standards organization that helps businesses, governments, and other organizations understand and communicate their impacts on issues such as climate change, human rights, and corruption.

Under increasing pressure from different stakeholder groups – such as governments, consumers, and investors – to be more transparent about their environmental, economic, and social impacts, many companies publish a sustainability report, also known as a corporate social responsibility (CSR) or environmental, social and governance (ESG) report. GRI's framework for sustainability reporting helps companies identify, gather and report this information in a clear and comparable manner. First launched in 2000, GRI's sustainability reporting framework is now the most widely used by multinational organizations, governments, small and medium enterprises (SMEs), NGOs, and industry groups in more than 90 countries. In 2017, 63 percent of the largest 100 companies (N100), and 75 percent of the Global Fortune 250 (G250) reported applying the GRI reporting framework.

The most recent of GRI's reporting frameworks are the GRI Standards, launched in October 2016. Developed by the Global Sustainability Standards Board (GSSB), the GRI Standards are the first global standards for sustainability reporting and are a free public good. In contrast to the earlier reporting frameworks, the GRI Standards have a modular structure, making them easier to update and adapt.


Source: Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Reporting_Initiative#Reporting_guidelines
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