Corporate Governance and Accountability

From the creation of consumer products, to meeting society's energy needs, to providing financial services to other businesses and individuals, the business sector has innumerable interactions with the economic, social and environmental spheres of sustainable development. In today's global economy, businesses have enormous local and international influence.

IISD's Measurement and Assessment program has engaged in active research on sustainable development in the business sector since 1992, when we published Business Strategy for Sustainable Development. Today the program's business sector efforts focus on three primary areas:

Corporate Sustainability Reporting

The results of corporate efforts regarding sustainable development are increasingly published in internal and external corporate reports. In practice, many terms are used to refer to such reports, including sustainability, responsibility, corporate social responsibility, environmental and accountability reports. However, while the quality of corporate sustainability reports has improved greatly over the last several years, debate continues regarding the information that should be included, how it should be structured and how it is used in practice. IISD's Measurement and Assessment program has been engaged in such questions for over 15 years. One of its key activities in this area has been its participation on a panel of judges for the annual Corporate Reporting Awards presented by the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants.

In 1993 the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants created an award category for environmental reporting. Over the years the category has evolved to focus on sustainable development reporting, corporate governance and electronic disclosure. Since 1993 IISD has annually reviewed dozens of reports from an array of sectors, including mining, financial services, diversified industries, oil and gas, life sciences and technology, real estate, forest products, industries and energy, consumer products, communications and media, and utilities and pipelines.

Corporate Sustainability Indicators

People both inside and outside a corporation require synthesized information regarding its sustainable development performance. To address this challenge, many corporations have created sustainability indicators to help measure progress toward defined goals and objectives. These indicators often occupy a prominent position in corporate sustainability reports. However, many corporations, industry associations and external organizations have struggled to develop reliable, synthesized information regarding corporate sustainability performance. While work on the development of corporate sustainability indicators is abundant and growing, many questions remain regarding how indicators are actually used in practice. IISD's Measurement and Assessment program has been engaged in corporate sustainability indicators since its inception and continues to work on addressing these challenges.

Life-Cycle Assessment

LCA is a systematic tool used for assessing the potential environmental impacts associated with a specific product or process. While LCA does not predict absolute or precise environmental impacts, it can help highlight areas in need of greater focus and is particularly useful in making comparisons among options. The phases in a LCA are: (1) goal and scope definition, (2) inventory analysis, (3) impact assessment and (4) interpretation. IISD's Measurement and Assessment program is currently exploring the use of LCA as a decision-support tool at the policy, planning and programming levels and has completed a limited number of pilot studies.

Two pilot studies have focused on the potential environmental impacts of paper-based and electronic-based billing. The studies were conducted on behalf of TelPay Incorporated.