Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)
What is GRI and how it differs from other reporting standard-setters?
First sustainability reporting framework
The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) was founded in 1997 and since then, it has been a household name in the sustainability reporting scene. Its first `guidelines’ were published in 2000 and the sixth edition of `revised universal standards’ was published in October 2021. They should be followed from January 1st, 2023.
According to its own `25th anniversary´ leaflet, GRI was the first to publish a universal environmental reporting framework. At the heart of the standards is recognition of all the stakeholders and reporting ‘material topics that represent the organization’s most significant impacts on the economy, environment, and people, including impacts on their human rights tribal peoples in independent countries…’.
This article will summarize the newest set of standards (‘2021’) and what has been changed from earlier ones (‘2016’). The earlier set of standards came into effect on July 1st, 2018 and most companies are probably still reporting according to them. Next week, I will have a look at some other GRI publications and how the GRI standards align with other frameworks.
The newest set of standards can be downloaded here.
GRI Standards 2021
This set of standards includes:
Three universal standards:
GRI 1: Foundation 2021 (Older one: ‘GRI 101: Foundation 2016’),
GRI 2: General Disclosures 2021 (Older one: ‘GRI 102: General Disclosures 2016’),
GRI 3: Material Topics 2021 (Older one: ‘GRI 103: Management Approach 2016’).
Sector standards – these will be published in an ongoing process,
Topic standards – these were published between 2016-2021 and some of them will be revised in the future.
All the standards have requirements for how to report disclosures according to the standards.
GRI 1 is the starting point for the reporting process. The standard includes the purpose and system of the GRI standards, and it introduces the key concepts: impact, material topics, due diligence and stakeholder. It guides how to report by the GRI Standards and specifies the reporting principles, which should be followed. It also has a GRI content index template, which needs to be filled according to the reporting results.
GRI 2 has five general disclosure groups, which are updated as:
The organization and its reporting practices (5 disclosures)
Activities and workers (3 disclosures)
Governance (13 disclosures)
Strategy, policies and practices (7 disclosures)
Stakeholder engagement (2 disclosures)
GRI 3 guides how to identify and report material topics. It has four steps:
Understand the organization’s context,
Identify actual and potential impacts,
Assess the significance of the impacts,
Prioritize the most significant impacts for reporting.
The topic standards
The topic standards have been developed as a guide `to report
information about its impacts in relation to particular topics’. There is a wide range of topics and the standards have been grouped under three groups:
GRI 200 series: Economic standards (7 standards),
GRI 300 series: Environment Standards (7 standards),
GRI 400 Series: Social Standards (17 standards).
Almost all the topic standards were published with the earlier set of standards. Since then, GRI has published four more topic standards: water and effluents (2018), occupational health and safety (2018), tax (2019) and waste (2020). There are plans to review some standards, too.
The sector standards
The sector standards give industry-specific guidance on how to determine and report sector-specific material topics. Presently, there exist guides for three sectors (oil and gas, coal, agriculture, aquaculture, and fishing) and three guides are under their way (mining, food and beverages, and textiles and apparel).
What has changed from 2018
In a summary, there are changes in principles, material topics and their boundaries, making claims related to the use of the GRI Standards (before core and comprehensive options), general disclosures (there used to be 6 groups of disclosures: the organizational profile, strategy, ethics and integrity, stakeholder engagement and reporting practice), and GRI 103 didn’t have step-by-step guidance.
For changes in disclosures, the GRI provides a free Excel tool on its website: `This tool provides an overview of the changes between the disclosures in the GRI Universal Standards 2016 and the GRI Universal Standards 2021’.
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Disclaimer: I am a GRI certified sustainability professional and, hence, interested in following the development of the GRI standards. Moreover, I am keen to share best practices and sources, as always.