UN Planning for Sustainable Development

Sustainability reporting can serve as bridge between business and sustainable development, according to the UN’s Global Report Initiative (GRI).

At the UN Global Compact's triennial Leaders’ (UNGC) Summit in New York, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon addressed the pivotal role of business in helping to make the global vision of sustainable development a reality before an audience of more than 1,000 business leaders from around the world.

He said the GRI Guidelines – the most widely used sustainability reporting framework in the world – were an effective tool for businesses to integrate sustainability into their strategies and to regularly assess and articulate their impact on sustainable development.

“To achieve alignment with key partners, GRI plans to work with UNGC to develop private sector guidance that will help companies enhance their sustainability management and reporting with a view to global sustainable development goals and targets,” GRI Chief Executive Ernst Ligteringen said.

“The presence of so many business leaders here is evidence of the private sector’s willingness to embrace its role as a central actor to bring about change.

“But to play its part effectively, business needs a comprehensive, globally applicable framework through which to provide the degree of transparency and consistency that is required to make information useful and credible to markets and society.

“Thousands of companies have applied the GRI Guidelines to their operations over the last decade.  The Guidelines support a standardized yet flexible approach to reporting, and are designed as a consolidated framework for reporting performance against different codes and norms for sustainability.

“As such, they provide an effective means for companies to understand and articulate how their own sustainability impacts relate to wider private sector action on sustainable development goals.”