Sustainability management moves up a gear

The Global Reporting Initiative has retooled its guidance on sustainability reporting in a way that enables companies to manage their activities in this area proactively. As a result, internal auditors could play a more central role in providing assurance on organisations’ sustainability processes.

In the latest issue of the ECIIA’s European Corporate Governance magazine, ECIIA Management Board member Silvio de Girolamo writes that the body’s Sustainability Reporting Guidelines (G4) represent something of a revolution.

“G4 can be seen as nothing less than a thorough-going re-specification of the sustainable approach to business,” he says. “Sustainability reporting no longer aims to just measure the organisation’s impact on the outside world in retrospect, but seeks to develop a full set of tools to detect and interpret that impact in time for the business to take action.”

Also in the edition, in an exclusive interview, MEP Ashley Fox calls for a moratorium on corporate governance reform until the most recent set of European Union rules and regulations have had time to bed in.

“Companies provide the profit and the employment that drive prosperity and we are in danger in the European Union of over-regulating our businesses,” he says.

Download the issue here.

For more information: www.eciia.eu.