The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) was launched in 1997 as a joint initiative of the U.S. non-governmental organisation (NGO) ‘Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies’ (CERES) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The purpose of GRI was to enhance the quality, rigour, and utility of sustainability reporting. The initiative has enjoyed the active support and engagement of representatives from business, non-profit advocacy groups, accounting bodies, investor organisations, trade unions and many more. Together, these different constituencies have worked to build a consensus around a set of reporting guidelines with the aim of achieving worldwide acceptance.

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) is a long-term, multi-stakeholder, international process whose mission is to develop and disseminate globally applicable Sustainability Reporting Guidelines. These Guidelines are for voluntary use by organisations for reporting the economic, environmental, and social dimensions of their activities, products, and services. The aim of the Guidelines is also to assist business organisations and their stakeholders to understand and articulate their contribution to sustainable development.

After the publication of the first set of Guidelines for Sustainability Reporting in June 2000, the trends that catalysed GRI have continued unabated. In most cases, in fact, the trends have intensified. The issues—globalisation and corporate governance, accountability, and citizenship—have now moved to the mainstream of policy and management debates in many organisations and the countries in which they operate.
The turbulent first years of the 21st century underscore the reason for GRI’s rapid expansion. Higher standards of accountability and an increasing dependence on wide-ranging networks, spanning several groups of external stakeholders, will form a significant part of organisational practices in the years to come. Support for creating a new, generally accepted disclosure framework for sustainability reporting continues to grow among business, civil society, government and labour stakeholders.

GRI’s rapid evolution in just a few years from a bold vision to a new permanent global institution reflects the imperative and the value that various constituencies assign to such a disclosure framework. The GRI process, rooted in inclusiveness, transparency, neutrality, and continual enhancement, has enabled GRI to give concrete expression to accountability.

As sustainable development has become widely adopted as a foundation of public policy and organisational strategy, many organisations have turned their attention to the challenge of translating the concept into practice. The need to better assess an organisation’s status and align future goals with a complex range of external factors and partners has increased the urgency of defining broadly accepted sustainability performance indicators.

The financial industry is slowly but steadily embracing sustainability reporting as a part of its analytical toolkit. Spurred in part by growing demand for social and ethical funds among institutional and individual investors, new indices of social responsibility are appearing each year. At the same time, the exploration of the relationship between corporate sustainability activities and shareholder value is advancing. Linkages between sustainability performance and key value drivers such as brand image, reputation, and future asset valuation are awakening the mainstream financial markets to new tools for understanding and predicting value in capital markets.

Sustainability reporting helps sharpen management’s ability to assess the organisation’s contribution to natural, human, and social capital. This assessment enlarges the perspective provided by conventional financial accounts to create a more complete picture of long-term prospects. Reporting helps highlight the social and ecological contributions of the organisation and the sustainability value proposition of its products and services. Such measurement is central to maintaining and strengthening the ‘licenceto operate’.