Climate-related disclosures have entered a new era. With regulations coming from the EU, California, the SEC, and other governments, the world is shifting from voluntary climate disclosure to mandatory. After years of adhering to standards and frameworks like the TCFD, GRI, and CDP, many companies will be required to adhere to government set standards. Where does that leave the old voluntary standard setters?
During the Reuters Responsible Business 2024 panel Standardized, Transparent Reporting: Coordination of Regulations & Standards, we heard from Matt Rusk, head of GRI North America, who shed light on what GRI’s goals are moving forward. Matt indicated that GRI intends to work toward further interoperability with other standards, frameworks and regulations. This should enable those disclosing data under GRI to also use that for other voluntary or mandatory reporting.
He also discussed the possibility of developing standardized questionaries for companies – welcome news for many ESG professionals. Presently, when companies or investors reach out to other companies to request ESG information they often do so in a non-uniform way. This leads to many people asking for the same data in slightly different ways. These questionnaires tie up ESG professionals who could otherwise be working to make their companies more sustainable and are often seen as tedious and burdensome. By aligning data into a standard questionnaire, time spent answering these requests could be dramatically reduced. If and when we’ll see that from GRI remains an open question, but the concept appears promising.
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