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International standards organization

The Global Reporting Initiative (known as GRI) is an international independent standards organization that helps businesses, governments, and other organizations understand and communicate their impacts on issues such as climate change, human rights, and corruption. Since its first draft guidelines were published in March 1999, GRI's voluntary sustainability reporting framework has been adopted by multinational organizations, governments, small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), NGOs, and industry groups. Over 10,000 companies from more than 100 countries use GRI. GRI thus provides the world's most widely used sustainability reporting standards. The GRI Standards have a modular structure, making them easier to update and adapt. Three series of Standards support the reporting process. The GRI Universal Standards apply to all organizations and cover core sustainability issues related to a company’s impact on the economy, society, and the environment. The GRI Sector Standards apply to specific sectors, particularly those with the highest environmental impact, such as fossil fuels. The GRI Topic Standards list disclosures relevant to a particular topic area. GRI Standards and reporting criteria are reviewed every three years by the Global Sustainability Standards Board (GSSB), an independent body created by GRI. and the first full version in June 2000. Work immediately began on a second version which was released at the World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in August 2002—where the organization and the guidelines were also referred to in the Plan of Implementation signed by all attending member states. where it subsequently incorporated as a non profit organization and a Collaborating Centre of the United Nations Environment Programme. GRI has managed to mobilize extensive contributions of time, knowledge and funding from a wide variety of individuals and organizations. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan described it as having a "unique contribution to make in fostering transparency and accountability of corporate activities beyond financial matters". A key factor in GRI’s success has been its global multi stakeholder network, which grew from about 200 organizations and individuals in early 2000 to over 2000 members by early 2002. The network provided a platform for analysis and feedback on the Guidelines, enabling diverse stakeholders to actively engage in their creation and evolution. The GRI and the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) illustrate two major approaches to materiality, with differences that may cause confusion in interpreting information about “material sustainability issues”. The governance structure for the permanent institution was approved on June 21, 2002. The institutional side of the GRI, supporting the network, is made up of the following governance bodies: board of directors, stakeholder council, technical advisory committee, organizational stakeholders, and a secretariat. Diverse geographic and sector constituencies are represented in these governance bodies.

The GRI framework aims to enable third parties to assess environmental impact from the activities of the company and its supply chain. The most recent of GRI's reporting frameworks are the revised Universal Standards, which were published in October 2021, and came into effect for reporting in January 2023. The development of GRI standards was influenced by policies in the fields of international labor practices and environmental impact, which it, in turn has influenced. while OHSAS 18001 laid down a health and safety risk management system. The International Labour Organization (ILO)'s eight core conventions outline specific groups or population that require special attention: women, children, migrant workers and their families, persons belonging to national or ethnic, linguistic, and religious minorities, indigenous peoples, and persons with disabilities. The reporting standards set by the GRI ESG assessment and reporting were developed based on principles set in OECD guidelines for Multinational corporations and UN Guiding Principles.

The Global Reporting Initiative is one example of a transformative shift in accountability systems to one based on a network of actors, observation of global public concerns, new problem framing and an ideological shift. Initially GRI worked with a number of Data Partners to collect and process information about GRI reporting and sustainability reporting in general and reporting trends in specific countries and regions. This information was added to GRI's Sustainability Disclosure Database. In the United States, the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland the official GRI data partner was the Governance & Accountability Institute. In 2020 GRI decided to discontinue its publicly accessible sustainability disclosure database as of April 2021, due to the overhead of maintaining the collection. The publicly available database had over 63,000 reports spanning nearly 20 years from hundreds of companies. It is still possible to register GRI Standards based reports and other published materials through the GRI Standards Report Registration System. Under Requirement 9 of GRI 1: Foundation 2021, notifying GRI of the use of the GRI standards is a mandatory step in reporting for associated organizations. Responsibility for the quality and verification of such reports is the responsibility of the reporting organization and its stakeholders. While GRI no longer provides examples of reports, the reports of many organizations are available from company websites. Under the 2021 guidelines, which are required for reporting as of January 2023, organizations may report either "in accordance" with GRI (more stringent) or "in reference" to GRI. Both options involve notification. A key issue in the adoption of GRI Standards is that compliance is voluntary. Outcomes depend on the quality and type of information reported. Further, firms may selectively disclose sustainability information. Research suggests that resources for sustainability reporting may be insufficient and staff undertrained in many companies. GRI attempts to address this by providing training. Independent assurance of sustainability reports may be demanded by stakeholders, and third party assurance is standard practice for many large and mid cap companies, though often expensive. Absence of assurance is associated with lower quality and credibility of sustainability reporting. Companies that would provide such a reporting would be required to report on environmental, social and employee related, human rights, anti corruption and bribery matters. Additionally, these large corporations would be required to describe their business model, outcomes and risks of the policies on the above topics, and the diversity policy applied for management and supervisory bodies. The reporting techniques were encouraged to rely on recognized frameworks such as GRI's Sustainability Reporting Guidelines, the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC), the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, OECD Guidelines, International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 26000 and the International Labour Organization (ILO) Tripartite Declarations. Sustainability reporting requirements for companies were further expanded in the EU's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) which took effect on 5 January 2023. GRI was actively involved in the development of the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) which were submitted to the European Commission by the Sustainability Reporting Board (SRB) of the European Financial Reporting Advisory (EFRAG) as a step towards implementation of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). GRI worked for interoperability between GRI's global Standards, which focus on impact materiality, and the ESRS' focus on double materiality. Double materiality requires public reporting of both sustainability factors affecting the financial materiality of the company and its outward materiality (how the company affects society and the environment).

As of 24 March 2022, GRI and the International Financial Reporting Standards Foundation (IFRS) announced that they would collaborate to align the International Sustainability Standards Board (“ISSB”)'s investor focused Sustainability Disclosures Standards for the capital markets with the GRI's multi stakeholder focused sustainability reporting standards. As of 6 June 2023, the ISSB issued its inaugural standards (IFRS S1 and IFRS S2) for sustainability related disclosures in capital markets.