GRI Standards for Environmental Sustainability – A Brief Review

Considering the United Nations (UN) 2030 agenda, understanding and proper reporting of the sustainability goals related to Environment, Society, and Governance (ESG) are pivotal for transitioning to sustainable development. Sustainability disclosures and their reporting by organizations have become necessary not only due to prevailing climate crises, global warming and other climate change-related issues but also due to their effect on the market value of firms. At present, the literature on sustainability reporting guidelines and standards under different headings, terminologies, and publications by different bodies is in the process of evolution thus creating a challenge for user organizations to properly understand their purposes and applications. Differences in headings, terminologies related to sustainability reporting guidelines and standards further lead to inconsistent and incomparable reporting practices followed by organizations. Therefore, to overcome this challenge, there is a need to simplify and standardize the framework/structure, standards and guidelines for users for sustainability reporting, and it would be useful to business managers, practitioners, sustainability managers, academia, and other researchers. This paper reviews and simplifies the structure of Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standards issued by the Global Sustainability Standards Board (GSSB) and then explains the GRI environmental standards (GRI 300 series) and their application for organizations to align their organizational goals with UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and reporting their sustainability performance related indicators along with financial statements so that investors and other stakeholders could be able to make informed capital allocation decisions.