Sustainability, in the context of the corporate world, can be simplistically defined as the policies and strategies which companies put in place to enable them to reduce their impact on the environment around them as much as possible. These should take into account key environmental issues such as climate change, resource efficiency and waste and pollution management as well as a consideration of how consumption of limited natural resources can be minimised to ensure their future existence.

It is an area which corporations wishing to remain competitive in an increasingly competitive world ignore at their peril. Employees are considering corporations with good sustainability credentials as employers of choice and those corporations at the forefront of the sustainability wave are using these credentials, successfully, as an opportunity to differentiate themselves from their competitors.

Sustainability Reporting is defined in the Global Reporting Initiative Sustainability Reporting Guidelines (“GRI Guidelines”) as “… the practice of measuring, disclosing and being accountable to internal and external stakeholders for organisational performance towards the goal of sustainable development”.

With increased awareness around the world of the issues relating to our ability to sustain increasing populations and resource requirements, combined with fundamental shifts in the way society is viewing sustainability, the concept of sustainability reporting for corporations is becoming a mainstream issue worldwide.

Sustainability reporting enables companies and their various stakeholders to achieve three main objectives:

  1. Benchmarking and assessment of sustainability performance against law norms, codes and performance standards.

  2. Demonstrate expectations and the performance achieved against those expectations with specific reference to sustainable development.

  3. Compare sustainability performance both internally and externally over time.

Over and above that however, it is a very real opportunity for corporations to inform the marketplace of their sustainability credentials in a systematic informative manner which can only add to their ability to compete in the world we currently operate within.

 John Jones

Audit and Corporate Taxation Partner, Johannesburg