Sustainability
Transparency & Accountability are Basic Tenets of Sustainability Reporting
Standardization still eludes sustainability reporting, but the foundation of every report should be transparency and accountability.
By Robin Byrd
Transparency and accountability are two critical tenets of sustainability reporting that are still evolving, just like the sustainability report itself. A lack of report standardization in the past has led to non-standard report forms and content, but there are underlying principles that every reporting process should incorporate. Transparency includes everything from required to voluntary disclosures in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) outcomes. Accountability refers to the organized and consistent reporting of ESG metrics and information of importance to stakeholders. The transparency and accountability built into sustainability reporting are critical to producing meaningful disclosures of interest to stakeholders.
Early sustainability reporting offered insights in environmental sustaina...
