THE GLOBAL REPORTING INITIATIVE: AN ANALYSIS OF STRATEGIC IMPLEMENTATION AND ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE INDICATORS

Abstract

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) arose in response to the idea that to attain sustainable development, a globally recognized indicator framework that describes organizations’ impact upon the triple bottom line was needed. GRI’s mission is to elevate sustainability reporting to equivalency with financial reporting by creating a commonly agreed framework. However, unlike financial reporting, which is targeted primarily at one key stakeholder, the shareholder, sustainability reporting has a large and diverse audience and issues range from as straightforward as number of vacation leave days per employee to as complex as quantifying indirect greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, to address the need for guidance in creating a GRI based sustainability report, this paper is focused on creating a roadmap to reporting performance indicators by qualitatively analyzing the environmental dimension of GRI G3-based sustainability reports. The objective is to identify the indicators most commonly used and to identify a trend in indicators selection across all reports. The goal is to provide assistance and guidance to make the environmental sustainability aspect of the reporting process less daunting. This project recommends a framework that could serve to promote the improvement in quality of GRI based sustainability reporting.