Civil Society Perspective on Sustainability Reporting and Sustainability Reporting Policies
Corporate sustainability reporting has built a lot of momentum in the last few years. Its importance was addressed as part of the Outcome Document of the Rio+20 Conference (paragraph 47) and a governments’ group (Friends of paragraph 47) has been set to identify best practices and open the conversations on how governments can encourage and advance reporting .
Important progress has been made in reporting modalities and the uptake of their use. Some governments and market institutions, such as stock exchanges, are trying to further advance the use of reporting through regulating and promoting its use. The increase in interest and expectation in this area has also led to increased scrutiny of sustainability reports and sustainability reporting policies. This brings new challenges for its application and requires an informed and constructive debate to enable corporate reporting to succeed in aligning companies’ activities with good governance, human rights and environmental protection.
