“Never doubt that a small group of people can change the world,
indeed, that is the only way the world has ever been changed
Margaret Mead, Anthropologist

When Al Gore delivered these words to the enthusiastic closing plenary audience, the salience for GRI of Mead’s timeless quote was clear: a once small group is growing through its stakeholders – drawn from around the globe and from broad constituencies – into a powerful influence for positive change.

The former Vice President of the USA went on to declare that the days of sustainability reporting being labeled a “niche” are gone.  “It is not a niche. The old way of measuring value is becoming irrelevant to the more complete approach to what we really need to understand and track”, he said.

The 1^st Amsterdam GRI conference was an immense success that brought together 161 speakers and 1,150 participants from 65 countries, representing business, financial markets, civil society, labor, government, assurance providers and municipalities. Roughly half of the participants were from Europe or North America and 250 originated from 37 developing and emerging market countries.

Showcasing a world-class program, and featuring the launch of the G3 Guidelines, the conference raised global public interest and generated around 75 different news articles, published in over 150 newspapers and publications in 30 countries. This coverage is truly evident of the growing movement behind sustainability reporting and the ever-increasing interest and support among broad groups around the world.

Conference participants’ reflections included:

“The GRI is the world’s leading framework for sustainability reporting, which serves the accountability of an organization, as well as change management and processes in business.”

“The G3 Guidelines are a major step forward, being the most robust and user-friendly set of sustainability reporting guidelines to date, with a better structure.”

“The GRI increasingly serves as common disclosure framework. The conference-launched alliance between the Global Compact and GRI, which among other things includes a linkage tool to facilitate the combined use of the two frameworks, can be seen in this light.”

Conference in Review (PDF) provides an exclusive portrait of the 2006 Amsterdam GRI Conference.