How Firms Can ‘Measure What Matters’

by | Dec 12, 2013

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The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), The Prince’s Accounting for Sustainability Project (A4S) and the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) are part of a project called Measure What Matters, which aims to bring greater alignment between corporate, national and global metrics of success to accelerate the transition to sustainable economies.

The initiative, led by the Green Economy Coalition, stems from the “world’s vision of progress being based on a false measure of success: profit.” As a result the environment and people have been harmed, the partners say. The new project uses non-financial sustainability indicators as a benchmark rather than profit alone.

Measure What Matters aims to help companies best measure, manage and disclose their sustainability impacts by connecting corporate sustainability reporting with government’s work to find alternatives to GDP as the primary measure of progress, says Teresa Fogelberg, deputy chief executive at GRI.

The organizations say they have seen a marked increase in the development of sustainability indicators. But to date, these indicators have been developed in isolation from each other. The lack of alignment between sustainability efforts risks negatively impacting the shift to more sustainable economies, according to the partners.

A project website will soon be launched, which will include blog posts from GRI and other project partners.

Earlier this month GRI launched a service to check whether the most critical disclosures in reports based on its G4 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines are located as stated, and can be easily found by readers.

 

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