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Business Reporting on the SDGs

A collaborative initiative by GRI and the United Nations Global Compact, ‘Business Reporting on the SDGs’ – an Action Platform, aims 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 the GRI 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.

The Action platform has created three SDG reporting tools. The first deliverable, the report Analysis of the Goals and Targets aims to help companies understand how they are impacting the SDGs and their targets, by providing a list of indicators to make reporting on the SDGs straightforward and simple to execute.

The second deliverable, Integrating the SDGs into Corporate Reporting: A Practical Guide outlines three steps for companies to embed the SDGs in existing business and reporting processes in alignment with GRI Standards and recognized principles. The publication is meant to be used together with other relevant tools released by GRI, the UN Global Compact and their partners as part of a company’s regular reporting cycle.

Finally, the publication In Focus: Addressing Investor Needs in Business Reporting on the SDGs provides additional information about investor-relevant aspects of corporate SDG reporting.

Translations of the publications:

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.

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