When Titans Learn to Dance: GRI Partners with CDP + UNGC

Last Wednesday, the Amsterdam-based Global Reporting Initiative (GRI, the international corporate sustainability reporting standard setter) announced a linkage document with the London-based Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP, a greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and climate change reporting system).  This marked the second partnership within the past two months for GRI.  In late May, GRI announced a collaboration with the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC, the largest worldwide organization of corporations committed to corporate responsibility and sustainability) to align their work.

These partnerships between GRI, CDP, and UNGC are akin to Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Oprah Winfrey joining forces to assure that business, at the least, does no harm to people and the planet and, at best, advances the cause of sustainability, prosperity, and justice.

In other words, they’re titans in their respective domains.  At a time when pressure continues to mount on companies to disclose non-financial information, the fact these titans are working together in common cause can multiply the impact they have separately.  Yet because each has a unique style, it may take a while to get the choreography right. Nevertheless, they’re making the right moves.  Shall we dance?

According to the GRI – CDP press release, “the two organizations have agreed to collaborate and [provide] feedback on each other’s general and sector-specific guidelines and questionnaires.”  Specifically, over 1,300 organizations from 64 countries use GRI’s third generation (G3) guidelines to frame their sustainability reports.  At the same time, 2,500 global organizations report their climate change data in response to the CDP Guidance and questionnaire, which provides information to more than 550 institutional investors with some $64 trillion under management.  While the two reporting protocols have different scopes (GRI covers sustainability broadly, CDP covers climate narrowly), they overlap significantly. Harmonizing their standards make it easier for reporters and their stakeholder audiences to play their part in constructive ways.

As for the GRI – UNGC agreement, GRI will develop a guidance regarding the Global Compact’s ten principles and issue areas, while incorporating them into the next version of GRI’s Sustainability Reporting Guidelines.  In its agreement with the GRI, the Global Compact committed to adopting the GRI Guidelines as the recommended reporting framework for the more than 5,800 businesses that have joined its corporate responsibility platform.  The move significantly enhances the Global Compact’s Communication on Progress (COP) that simply required signatory companies to report on the status of their adherence to the principles, a protocol that has come under intense criticism as lacking “teeth” to promote actual improvement in corporate responsibility and sustainability.

However tentative their first steps, these NGO titans are learning to dance together[*], which bodes well for the world.  It’s also a sign of how organizations can scale their impact and keep pace with change without losing their focus:  through strategic alliances; vibrant networks; reflective, purposeful stakeholder engagement; and continued assessment and fine-tuning.  Throw in interactive technology, and you have a powerful antidote to poverty, suffering, and injustice.  Now that’s music we all can dance to.