Working together with The University of Hong Kong and CSR Asia, GRI has conducted a survey in order to gain a better understanding of current practices of the reporting of community performance and impacts. This is part of the process of continuously improving GRI’s Framework for Sustainability Reporting.

The new research conducted in 2007 and released in January 2008 found that the majority of reports emphasize positive community impacts without mentioning any negative ones. The research also revealed that the majority of reports include a distinct section on Community and the most frequent topics reported are Education and Training and Philanthropy, and Charitable Giving.

The reports examined were found to mostly focus on reporting their own performance as opposed to what changes or benefits occur as a result of their activities, and most reports were found to be relatively weak in fulfilling the DMA requirements. In addition, the majority of G3 reporters claim to be reporting in accordance with the G3 Guidelines SO1 indicator, however, in reality only 11 percent of the G3 reporters fully report according to the SO1 Indicator protocol.

The researchers reviewed 72 sustainability reports, 58 of these were G3 reports and 14 non-GRI reports (including non-declared G3 reports). The reports were taken from 25 different sectors. The sample both reflected the current regional distribution of GRI universe of reports and was inclined towards sectors which are seen to have a relatively substantial impact on community for example, the extractive sector.

Download Reporting On Community Impacts (PDF)

Contact GRI for more information about this project.