UN Documents Propose Mandatory Sustainability Reporting

submitted by Albert Gomez

environmentalleader.com - January 31, 2012

Two influential documents – the Rio+20 negotiating text and the recommendations of the U.N. secretary general’s High Level Panel on Global Sustainability – both propose tighter sustainability reporting requirements for businesses, according to Chatham House fellow Paul Hohnen, writing in the Guardian.

In “Resilient People, Resilient Planet – A Future Worth Choosing,” published yesterday, the U.N. panel said one idea to consider is mandatory reporting by companies with market caps over $100 million. The paper also said that business groups should work with governments and international agencies to come up with a framework covering sustainable development reporting.

Zero Draft, the negotiating text for the U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development (known as Rio+20), calls for global policy to require all listed and large private companies to integrate sustainability into their reporting. According to Hohnen – formerly a diplomat, director of Greenpeace International and director of the Global Reporting Initiative – the language in the text echoes that which emerged from the 1992 Rio de Janeiro and 2002 Johannesburg summits, encouraging voluntary reporting.

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