Glossary term
Sustainability Reporting
Subject: Sustainability and ESG, ESG Frameworks, Standards and Disclosure
Also known as: ESG reporting, Non-financial reporting
Sustainability reporting is the practice of disclosing an organisation’s environmental, social and governance performance, risks and impacts to stakeholders, increasingly following common standards and subject to assurance.
Explanation
Early reports were voluntary documents with stories and selected data. Today many are shaped by standards such as GRI, ISSB, ESRS and sector frameworks, and by laws that require disclosure and external assurance. Content typically covers governance, strategy, risks and opportunities, targets and metrics such as emissions, energy, water, workforce and supply chain practices. The reader group differs by framework: investors for financial-materiality regimes, a wider public for impact-oriented ones. Frameworks including TCFD and integrated reporting shaped the structure that later standards adopted. Reports are published separately or inside the annual report, and now often in digital, tagged form. Finance, sustainability, legal and risk teams share the work. Outsiders judge a company's sustainability claims largely by this document, so any figure in it must be supportable on request.
Example
A multinational food company prepares its annual sustainability report. Sustainability staff gather data from plants and suppliers, finance checks the figures against accounting records, and legal reviews statements about targets. An assurance provider tests selected indicators. The audit committee reviews the draft, and the company publishes it with the annual report.
Not to be confused with
- Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
- CSR describes a company’s social conduct and giving. Sustainability reporting is the disclosure of measured performance and risks.