SASB and GRI Step Up Project to Align Reporting Standards

The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) and the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) announced ahead of the Global Climate Action Summit (GCAS) last week that they will soon move forward with a project to bring their standards in line with each other.

This joint effort is aimed at simplifying non-financial reporting standards to align with the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), which provides a disclosure framework built around offering financial market participants the information they need about how climate-change issues may affect their investments.

Corporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance is increasingly important to investors, with the number of investors who voluntarily promote ESG issues and incorporate them into investment analysis processes growing from 100 to more than 1,900 since 2006.

While GRI reporting standards focus on the impact organizations are having on the world and SASB develops standards for reporting sustainability information that could affect investor’s financial decisions about a company, there are many areas where GRI and SASB overlap. This new project aims to identify these areas so that the organizations can harmonize their standards, leading to simpler and more efficient reporting and report consuming in this valuable area.

At XBRL International, we welcome this announcement – it’s a very positive step. Of course, making the data digital, more accessible and always discoverable is the next requirement.