Key Message

While business reporting is increasingly sophisticated, understanding the linkages between social and environmental costs remains a pressing challenge.

Business

Measuring progress in Corporate Reporting

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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.

Sustainable development reporting is one way a business seeks to understand its interaction with communities, our environment and the economy. Companies at advanced stages of reporting have typically evolved from short environmental statements and one-off reports to more holistic "triple-bottom-line" reporting. Today's most sophisticated corporate reports present and analyze a suite of indicators on social, environmental and economic performance. But understanding and addressing the intricate linkages among issues and the full social and environmental costs of actions, remains a challenge.

IISD has been active in research on corporate reporting issues since 1992, when we published Business Strategy for Sustainable Development. Today, corporate sustainable development reporting is known by many names: Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reports, Corporate Sustainability reports and, more recently, Public Accountability Statements as now required in Canada's banking sector. The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) has established guidelines for this type of reporting and these have been adopted by many companies around the world.

IISD's Measurement and Assessment program is active in the corporate reporting arena through our involvement in the CICA Corporate Reporting Awards.