Once dismissed as fuzzy and meaningless work from greenies, sustainability reporting seems to be gaining some traction in boardrooms with the release of the latest Global Reporting Initiative.
The new G3 guidelines have the support of business leaders like Sir Mark Moody Stuart, Chair of global miner Anglo American and they are calling on their peers worldwide to adopt them.
The previous guidelines have been used by many corporations around the world, including Nike, Gap, Novartis, Microsoft and ABN Amro.
Still, questions remain about their effectiveness and whether triple bottom line reporting has any bottom line at all.
And with concerns growing about global warming, should sustainability reporting become compulsory.
Better to build sustainability reporting around carrots and sticks, according to a report from KPMG and the United Nations Environmental Program.
Reporting, it says, is just the tip of the iceberg and the focus really needs to be on performance. What passes for best practice now is no blueprint for the future.
"The knowledge that the voluntary versus mandatory debate does not imply an 'either/or' position bur rather finding a balance between regulation in certain high risk or high impact areas, allowing industry associations or individual companies to make decisions in other areas," the report says.
While some governments can look at draft legislation (sticks) which could, for example, introduce a 'comply or explain' arrangement', governments could also introduce some incentives (carrots) like relief from litigation.
And because accountants tend to have very little understanding for environmental management, and only now some are beginning to understand that environmental risk can translate into financial risk, we can expect these problematic issues to be thrashed out for many years to come.
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