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The Emerging Markets Disclosure Project (EMDP), an international initiative to improve corporate environmental, social and governance (ESG or sustainability) reporting in emerging markets, and more specifically to promote greater disclosure of sustainability factors by corporations operating in Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, South Africa and South Korea, today issued a renewed call to investors to sign onto its Investor Statement on Sustainability Reporting in Emerging Markets.  Signatories to the statement affirm that the next generation of leading companies will distinguish themselves through their commitment to sustainability through robust ESG reporting and will be correspondingly rewarded by the market.

Read more (Source: GRI)

First found on CSR Europe.

Some interesting news:

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The Roberts Environmental Center (REC) at Claremont McKenna College today released the analysis of social responsibility reporting for the 26 largest pharmaceutical companies world-wide. The report contains a compilation of Pacific Sustainability Index (PSI) scores evaluating the environmental and social reporting of the companies. Scoring is based on the transparency, intent, and performance for both environmental and social issues.

The research, based entirely on material released on the firms’ web sites, found Bristol-Myers Squibb (U.S.) and Sanofi-Aventis (France) led the sector as the two highest scoring companies. The lowest scoring companies, Forest Laboratories and NBTY, were smaller companies in the sector and are both based in the United States. There was a slight trend between PSI scores and annual revenue; however, Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer, the two largest corporations in the sector, both showed room for improvement.

Prior to the report’s release, companies were given the opportunity to respond to their scores and provide additional information if available. Often this reveals information not previously captured in the scoring system.

“Biogen Idec scored low in the rankings,” said Elgeritte Adidjaja, research fellow at REC. “However, after speaking with a representative responsible for sustainability matters, the company appears to be committed to many environmental programs, but they are not yet ready to make sustainability information public.”

To create the report’s ranking, REC evaluated each company’s web site using the PSI and sector-specific questions. The index uses a systematic questionnaire to analyze the quality of sustainability reporting. The selection of questions was based on the most frequently-mentioned topics in almost 1,800 corporate sustainability documents analyzed from 2002 through 2008 by the Roberts Environmental Center. The company’s grades in this report were assigned on a grading curve, giving an A+ to the highest scoring companies and those with scores near it.

To view the report, visit: http://www.roberts.cmc.edu/PSI/SectorReports.asp.

Some have said that sustainability is “doing well by doing good.” Perhaps this is a good start. But sustainability is much more than doing well or well enough. It’s all about performing!

Sustainability reporting initiatives such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) focus on “results.”  They provide their followers with a very long list of lagging indicators. The focus is always on “doing less of a bad thing.” So this approach does not seem to measure “doing well” directly! It is not about performing. Read more

Source: Green Biz

The number of large multinational companies reporting corporate responsibility (CR) data has risen dramatically over the last three years, with vast majority doing so because of ethical reasons, according to new research from KPMG.

Nearly three-quarters of the top 100 U.S. companies by revenue reported sustainability data this year, twice as many as three years ago, KPMG has found. Eighty percent of the world’s 250 biggest multinational companies divulge CR information, compared to 64 percent in 2005. Read more

Source: GreenBiz

The websites of Fortune 50 companies were evaluated to determine the depth and detail of information presented on environmental sustainability efforts of the company. A summary measure, called the Environmental Reporting Transparency Scorecard, was used to rank the companies. Findings:

· Environmental sustainability reporting is still being used as a public relations tool to position companies favorably on environmental issues, rather than to hold companies accountable to stakeholders for environmental performance.

· The majority of the Fortune 50 are providing some kind of environmental information online, but there is room for improvement in the adoption of the interactive and integrated technology that is available for reporting and stakeholder participation within the Web medium. These technologies would enhance the transparency of the reporting process.

· There is little evidence of stakeholder involvement in the environmental sustainability reporting process. If companies are involving stakeholders in this process, the disclosure of such participation would improve the appearance of transparency.

· Involving third party groups that provide reporting standards helped organizations to be more transparent in their reporting process, as determined by the ERTS scorecard.

Download the full report: http://www.themeasurementstandard.com/Images/EnvironSustainReport.pdf

Source: KD Paine and Partners

The majority of Fortune 50 corporations use the Internet to disclose some information on their environmental performance but most are missing opportunities to involve stakeholders, tap the interactive potential of the web, and provide transparency in their reporting, new research suggests.

Researchers at Brigham Young University and KDPaine and Partners set out to test a new model for transparency,  a hot topic in the field of corporate communications. After studying environmental information reported in the websites of F50 copanies, researchers found that a minority allow for any two-way interaction with stakeholders, which could inform and enhance the type of information they report. Read more

Source: Green Biz