Recent sustainability and integrated reporting developments

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25 Oct, 2018

A summary of recent developments at WBCSD, SSE and the PRI.

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) has released the 2018 edition of Reporting matters. This year’s report aims to show how companies are linking reporting and decision-making through three topic-specific addendum reports focused on climate change, water and human rights. The press release on the WBCSD website offers a summary of the key findings and access to the full report.

The United Nation's Sustainable Stock Exchanges (SSE) initiative and the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, have initiated a collaboration to raise environmental, social, and governance standards across emerging capital markets. The goal is to help build investor trust, attract capital, and grow strong local capital markets. Please see the press release on the SSE website.

The SSE has also released a new report focusing on how securities regulators can help promote the sustainable development goals. With 35 examples from 19 markets, the report provides a snapshot of what is happening around the world today. The report is available on the SSE website.

Another report released by the SSE is its biennial report on progress documenting a steep increase in a number of sustainability activities at stock exchanges. The report is available on the SSE website.

A group of leading global investor organisations has convened to address open questions relating to corporate Environmental, Social and Governance reporting to provide guidance and an investor perspective to the global Corporate Reporting Dialogue and its members.  A Discussion Paper presents the preliminary outputs from the group on a range of ESG reporting issues, calling attention both to points of broad consensus, and where opinion may still be divided.  Key points in the Discussion Paper include that there is a clear business case for ESG reporting for investors and companies and that there is no single solution – one set of metrics or a single framework – that will satisfy all users of ESG data.  The full report is available here.

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