Issues with conventional sustainability reporting

The report discusses that conventional sustainability reporting frameworks fail to include important issues in their reports, leading businesses to cherry-pick “positive” attributes, and ignore key ones. The report also notes that variations in indicators and excessive reporting and data make it challenging to compare organisational performance across companies.

Integrated approach towards sustainability indicators

The report advocates for organisational performance on sustainability be viewed in an integrated and comprehensive manner. It calls for the consideration of factors beyond economic efficiency and good governance, such as environmental, social, and human rights impacts. This position aims to ensure that short-term goals align with long-term sustainability objectives. An integrated approach can accommodate the simultaneous pursuit of economic, social, environmental, and democratic objectives. This view is vital, given that these four objectives underpin the elements of sustainable development.

Sustainability issues by issue and indicator area

The user manual further divides sustainability indicators into economy, society, and environment issues, sub-issues, and tiers. In the economy section, the manual identifies the main issues as materiality, governance, and economic and financial performance. In society, the report highlights poverty, health and wellbeing, gender, and human rights. It also delves into environment issues, including land use, pollution, and climate change.

Guidelines on sustainability disclosure

The report recommends that organisations undertake a comprehensive sustainability disclosure to communicate the business’s positive and adverse impacts effectively. The disclosure should include an analysis of the impact and methods to quantify and contextualise the company’s data; the report then gives guidelines on how to achieve this.

Sustainable Development Performance Indicators (SDPI): User manual of the two-tier approach

This document presents a two-tiered framework of 61 indicators for measuring and assessing sustainability performance and progress at the organisational level. Tier 1 comprises trend indicators that identify the trajectory of change of reported performance over a long period of time. Tier 2 encompasses context-based and transformative disclosure indicators that contextualise impact and disclose transformative potential. These indicators are applicable in the environmental, socioeconomic and institutional areas of sustainability.

This user manual presents frameworks that fit in with the global agreement on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and it is ideal for businesses or institutions that wish to measure and assess their sustainability performance holistically.

Conclusion

The report suggests that organisations’ sustainability performance assessment must be extensive and comprehensive. The sustainability assessment should establish a comprehensive baseline of data against historical precedent, international agreements, and scientific evidence. Moreover, the report calls for internationally accepted quantitative sustainability norms to be codified for sustainability issues’ thorough evaluation.