Global Reporting Initiative
The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) aims to make reporting on economic, environmental, and social performance – sustainability reporting – by all organizations as routine and comparable as financial reporting. It is an initiative involving the largest Transnational corporations as part of their work on Corporate Sociol Responsibility
To achieve this, the GRI develops, continuously improves and builds capacity around the use of the GRI's Sustainability Reporting Framework, the core of which being the Sustainability Reporting Guidelines. Other components in the Reporting Framework are Sector Supplements and Protocols
This reporting guidance - in the form of principles and indicators - is provided as a free public good and is intended for voluntary use by organizations of all sizes, across all sectors, all around the world.
The GRI Reporting Framework is increasingly recognized as the de facto global standard in sustainability reporting. Nearly 1000 organizations from over 60 countries, from business, civil society, labor, accounting, investors, academics, governments, and others, disclose their sustainability performance with reference to the GRI Guidelines.
To ensure the highest degree of technical quality, credibility, and relevance, the GRI reporting framework is developed and continuously improved through intensive stakeholder engagement that involves reporting organizations and information seekers, who work together in a consensus-seeking process. The GRI firmly believes that this multi-stakeholder engagement is the most valuable way to produce reporting guidance that is universally applicable and appropriately responds to stakeholders’ needs.
Multi-stakeholder engagement is so much at the heart of the GRI that it is not only pursued for product development, but also for the GRI’s own governance. An independent institution, the GRI is governed by a multi-stakeholder Board of Directors, Stakeholder Council, Technical Advisory Committee, Organizational Stakeholders, and a small staff at the international Secretariat in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Diverse geographic and sector constituencies are represented in these governance bodies.
In the spirit of continuous improvement, the GRI have undergone an innovative process to update their central Sustainability Reporting Guidelines (last released in 2002), and create a ‘third generation’ of Guidelines: G3.
The GRI was formed by the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies (CERES) and UNEP in 1997. In 2002, at the World Summit on Sustainable Development, the GRI became a permanent institution, with headquarters in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The GRI is a collaborating centre of UNEP and works in cooperation with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's Global Compact.
