Reporting Sustainability in India

Reporting Sustainability in India

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What is sustainability?

Industrialization and globalization have changed the context of business, accelerating

economic growth and intensifying social and environmental risks and impacts. A
sustainability program is the sum total of corporate strategies, policies, goals and
initiatives based on drivers of economic, social and environmental risk, return, resources
and reputation. Sustainability program ensures that amid environmental, social and even
economic uncertainty, an organization is able to adapt and remain viable for the long-term
interest of the owners.

Growing relevance of Sustainability reporting

Sustainability reporting as a practice, over the last ten years has evolved from being a
fringe one to a mainstream practice. Some of the drivers of the same are

1. There is an increasing volume of queries on sustainability performance of product/

services providing organizations from customers and socially responsible investors. In
some cases, the RFPs by prospective clients can ask information about sustainability
activities of the company, thus making it a part of market access requirement.

2. In not-so-distant future, for a company to be a supplier to corporations such as

WalMart, it would need to disclose its performance on parameters such as workers
working conditions, greenhouse gas emissions and use of natural resources such as
water.

3. Reporting ones performance on sustainability front has a definite marketing value,

either intended or intended. It can help in garnering recognition from third parties in
form of green/sustainability rankings.

4. As a continuation of a fierce competition in the marketplace on all parameters,

competition in public relations is ensuring that information requests such as Carbon
Disclosure Project are becoming mainstream means of communicating with conscious
investors and public.

EcoLogic Consultancy
Reporting Sustainability in India
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5. Activities that are voluntary today can become mandatory by law in future. Proposed
ideas such as CSR credits can make sustainability and corporate social responsibility a
key governance measure for action and reporting

6. Companies that have good performance in sustainability and reporting it have better
ability to attract and retain talent.

Global Reporting Initiative

GRI was started by the US based NGOs CERES and the Tellus Institute. It started as a
framework for environmental reporting in the early 1990s with the aim of creating an
accountability mechanism to ensure companies followed the CERES Principles for
responsible environmental conduct. GRI gives the reporting organization a flexibility of
choosing the level of compliance to the stipulated guidelines and the checking in form
suitable to the organization (self, third party or GRI itself). Across the globe, over 1000
organizations across countries, sectors and scales self declare the use of the GRI Guidelines
in their sustainability reports, and a multitude of others use the guidelines on a more
informal basis without self-declaration. In India, leading companies such as ITC, Infosys
and Dr. Reddy’s have their sustainability reports complying GRI guidelines.

An organization should base its sustainability report on GRI’s guidelines since

1. Businesses, through their operations have impact on the environment and the society
they operate in.

2. Many organizations undertake initiatives, spending significant resources – monetary

and non-monetary in executing these initiatives.

3. Socially responsible investors such as FMO do follow and stimulate others to use
Global Reporting Initiative’s G3 guidelines

4. Publishing a report complying G3 guidelines at the GRI forum can give the
organization visibility at international level along with the best in class companies
across the globe. Such a visibility is a powerful differentiator in the eyes of
stakeholders such as investors, suppliers and employees.

EcoLogic Consultancy
Reporting Sustainability in India
______________________________________________________________________________________

We can!
EcoLogic Consultancy can get involved with your organization to enable creation of a
sustainable development report (SDR). The framework we can adopt to generate SDR is
shown below.

Create company’s internal view of sustainability

Develop a framework required for external reporting in

line with GRI guidelines

Decide on application level and checking process - self,

third, GRI checking

Collate all the relevant information for publication

Design of sustainability development report (SDR) with

design agency and client

Publish SDR

EcoLogic Consultancy
Reporting Sustainability in India
______________________________________________________________________________________

About Us
EcoLogic Consultancy came into existence with the purpose of “To help our clients in
understanding, establishing sound Environment Management Systems, and pursuing
sustainable business solutions through our various services to abate direct and indirect
impact on ecological balance.”

We have expertise in the areas of carbon accounting and management, energy

management systems, voluntary/compliance carbon markets, environment management
and sustainability and carbon branding.

To know more about EcoLogic, please visit http://www.ecologicconsultancy.in.

To schedule a meeting and discussion with us, do reach us on

Kedar - +91-9000772462 – kedar@ecologicconsultancy.in

Indrajeet - +91-9028788430 – indrajeet@ecologicconsultancy.in

EcoLogic Consultancy