Business Reporting on the SDGs

GRI and the United Nations Global Compact have established a collaborative initiative, ‘Business Reporting on the SDGs’ – an Action Platform to accelerate corporate reporting on the Global Goals.

Empowering corporate action to achieve the SDGs

We are at a key moment in the evolution of sustainability; transparency is fast becoming the new paradigm for conducting business. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have ushered in a new era of global development objectives, aimed at addressing the world’s most pressing problems. The active participation of business is a principle driver in achieving these goals, but best practice for corporate reporting on the SDGs has yet to be established.

The UN Global Compact, the world’s largest corporate sustainability initiative, and GRI, the world’s leading organization for sustainability reporting, have formed a ground-breaking action platform to tackle this challenge. Business Reporting on the SDGs will complement GRI Standards and the UN Global Compact Communication on Progress, and enable measuring and reporting on the SDGs.

There is growing recognition of the value of corporate non-financial reporting. The Action Platform will leverage the GRI Standards – the world’s most widely used sustainability reporting standards – and the Ten Principles of the UN Global Compact to help businesses incorporate SDG reporting into their existing processes. This will empower corporate action that can make the achievements of the SDGs a reality.

View the introduction video here:

Expected outcomes of the Business Reporting on the SDGs

As a concrete output, the Business Reporting on the SDGs will offer a mechanism for reporting on the SDGs within GRI Standards and UN Global Compact Communication on Progress. The Action Platform work will also issue recommendation for aligning the two reporting frameworks.

Engaging leading businesses and non-corporate stakeholders

The Action Platform is built from two components:

The Corporate Action Group (CAG) serves as a business engagement and peer learning forum, where business representatives can demonstrate leadership by helping define and promote their contributions to the SDGs.

The Multi-stakeholder Advisory Committee (MAC) is comprised of the members of the CAG, plus representatives from other stakeholder groups: governments, international and civil society organizations, investors, trade unions, data users, statistical offices and academics. This committee will provide guidance for the research and analysis done by the UN Global Compact and GRI.

Important dates

Date	Event	Place
27 Mar 2017	Launch of the Action Platform for MAC & CAG Lab 1: Introduction to the SDGs	The Hague
26 Apr 2017	MAC meeting: Making Global Goals Local Business	New Delhi
4 May 2017	Special meeting on investor needs	Stockholm
30 May 2017	MAC meeting	Online
21 Jun 2017	CAG Lab 2: Poverty and economic growth	Online
18 Jul 2017	Presenting final draft analysis of the SDG goals and targets for business	New York
21 Sep 2017	CAG Lab 3: Investor expectations for SDG reporting & Mapping SDGs to your business	New York
21 Sep 2017	Presenting final analysis of the SDG goals and targets for business	New York
21 Sep 2017	Presenting final draft handbook for SDG business reporting	New York
Nov 2017	CAG Lab 4: Food security, global health, equality and education	Online
Dec 2017	Presenting final handbook for SDG business reporting

Further resources

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