Taking the GRI to scale: Towards the next generation of sustainability reporting guidelines

Abstract

Among the various contributions to the advancement of a partnership-based approach to sustainable development made by the 2002 UN World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), one in particular invited special attention. This is the reference-in paragraph 18 of the WSSD Plan of Implementation-to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)'s Sustainability Reporting Guidelines, the only 'global public policy initiative' to be specifically referenced in the Summit outcomes. A decade earlier, at the 1992 Rio de Janeiro 'Earth Summit', the concept of sustainability reporting did not yet exist. At the 1997 'Rio + 5' Summit, the GRI itself did not yet exist. Today nearly 500 organisations headquartered in 45 countries use the GRI Guidelines to report on their sustainability performance. How has sustainability reporting-and the rise of GRI as one of the most important information exchange platforms-occurred so rapidly? The success factor is the multi-stakeholder component which underlies all of GRI's product development and product revisions.