GRI representatives (Ernst Ligteringen, Chief Executive and Mike Wallace, Director of Sustainability Reporting Framework) last month spent a week in Boston, New York City and Washington, D.C. meeting with a variety of organizations to discuss these organizations perspectives on the development of ESG reporting.
Discussions with the SEC and other US Agencies about their plans regarding the improvement of corporate reporting on environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance was the main reason for the visit, which involved meetings with new appointees and staff at the US Department of State (Office of the Secretary of State and Policy & Planning); The White House Council on Environmental Quality; EPA’s Office of Policy, Economics and Innovation; and the US Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington DC .
The visit to New York City focussed on a meeting with representatives from the four major accountancy firms – Deloitte, Ernst and Young, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers, all of which are Global Partners in the GRI Organizational Stakeholder Program - to discuss the growing interest in reporting and the evolving role of the assurance industry with regards to ESG reporting.
Monitoring American reporting trends bolsters the rationale for GRI to engage further with US stakeholders. Recent figures show growth in GRI-based ESG reporting in the US and most visitors to the GRI website hail from the US. Furthermore US reporters were the second largest single country group of reporters in 2008 and the largest when it comes to numbers of Organizational Stakeholders.