Sustainability information – analysis of current trends in sustainability monitoring & reporting

Abstract

Government legislation, investor and stakeholder expectations, as well as international voluntary initiatives have all contributed to the rising demand for high-quality information and reporting on sustainability issues. The scientific community exploring sustainability issues is expanding quickly, and the need for sustainability data has grown significantly in recent years. Sustainability reporting is a fast developing topic with many different monitoring and reporting frameworks, some criteria that overlap, and problems with worldwide consistency. This frequently causes uncertainty on how data and information should be used to produce useful results and science-based resources. The paper ascertains current trends in monitoring and reporting sustainability-related information, including a particular analysis for each relevant level (i.e. country and corporate). The study commences with an updated review of sustainability reporting literature followed by an emphasis on the well-known instruments (i.e. SDGs index and the International Spillover index) used to monitor and report the nations progress toward SDGs. Also, the connections among different international approaches/initiatives for increasing the accountability of companies for sustainability actions were analysed and the improvements were emphasized. Although the worldwide reporting seems to be led by the adoption of the GRI and SASB standards, the range of metrics and disclosure patterns is wide and displays a high variation across industries, sectors, sizes, complexity and location. Through a structured analysis, the paper argued international initiatives (i.e. European Sustainability Reporting Standards and IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards) are of valuable importance for counteracting the fragmentation of available sustainability information and assuring the alignment and interoperability between different sustainability information.