Firms pushed to disclose their impact on society
Date: 08-Apr-02
Country: UNITED NATIONS
Author: Irwin Arieff
The Global Reporting Initiative is aimed at elevating such "non-financial reporting" to the same level as the reports that public companies around the world periodically issue on their financial health.
"By offering guidelines that enable companies to report on their work to improve environmental and social conditions, the GRI has a unique contribution to make in fostering corporate transparency and accountability beyond financial matters," U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan told organizers attending the launch ceremonies at U.N. headquarters in New York.
Annan has started a similar project, the Global Compact, to encourage companies to share their techniques for serving broad societal goals.
GRI board member Robert Massie said the new initiative marked "the dawn of a new era of corporate transparency."
"By providing standardized disclosure guidelines for reporting on economic, environmental and social performance, GRI greatly improves the prospects for aligning business interests with societal interests," he said in a statement.
The GRI guidelines are already being followed by more than 110 companies worldwide, including German chemicals group BASF AG, British Telecom, U.S. drug giant Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., Japanese printer and photocopier maker Canon Inc., French Food group Danone, U.S.-based sports clothing company Nike and South African Breweries Plc.
In the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway and France, some form of social reporting is required by law.
But in the rest of the world, such disclosures are voluntary, prompting the British arm of environmental organization Friends of the Earth to press for laws in more countries.
As long as the reporting requirements remain voluntary, most companies "will continue to do little or nothing," the group said in a printed statement
In Britain, for example, Prime Minister Tony Blair in October 2000 called on the country's top 350 companies to publish annual environment reports by the end of 2001.
But fewer than a third have actually issued a report or indicated their intention to do so, Friends of the Earth said.
