Ralph Thurm has an article in the Guardian’s Sustainable Business section (April 9, 2013) discussing the shortcomings of contemporary sustainability reporting practices and the lack of context available through reprots generated with GRI. In particular, he asks why this more important type of information isn’t part of the brand new GRI G4 guidelines, given that others are doing well-recognized work in this area.
How are we to get any real sense of the impact a company is having through it’s operations when it doesn’t place the data in any kind of either global or local context?
“What we have and will continue to have, are efficiency-driven relative indicators, good enough for rankings and ratings, but less useful to put the individual performance into the necessary context.”
Read the full article and feel free to let me know if you agree with Thurm’s general premis:
Closing the context gap: sustainability reporting is failing us