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WHAT IS SUSTAINABILITY REPORTING

Sustainability Reporting enables communication regarding the company’s progress towards Environmental, Social, and Governance goals to its stakeholders and consumers. Sustainability reporting reveals the company’s concern on environmental and sustainability issues, achieving transparency towards corporate social responsibility. The Sustainability Report of a company covers the impact of business activities on environmental resources and the steps that the company takes in order to reduce such impacts. It enhances the company’s growth and efficiency since sustainability reporting improves corporate reputation also gaining the trust and confidence of consumers. Sustainability reporting is a sort of non financial reporting as the communication through the report is made on non financial aspects of the company involving environment, society, government and economy. Reporting such aspects help the stakeholders have broader access to authentic information, achieving greater insights to takeinnovative decisions in order to improve global competitiveness. According to a report published by United Nations Global Compact (UNGC), 80% of the C- level executives interviewed, believe sustainability is a way to gain competitiveness in the global market, which makes it crucial for the companies to have a transparent sustainability report.

 SUSTAINABILITY REPORTING- SIGNIFICANCE ON BUSINESSES

Sustainability reporting in business is an important tool to improve its green initiatives and achieve a sense of sustainability and commitment towards the environment and society. It also helps the company to create a rapport with investors and clients while maintaining transparency and accountability in reporting. A better sustainability report creates demand among consumers in choosing brands. Companies must maintain adequate standard and transparency in sustainability reporting to facilitate a positive approach towards the company. This help them make better and effective decisions in business, achieving overall efficiency. Hence, It is important for the business to prioritize sustainability issues and plan their operations accordingly. Corporate sustainability reporting gives a holistic view of the business and indicates where to optimize costs and where reduce spending.

Customers are the backbone to any business. Through sustainability reporting, customers become more aware of sustainability aspects of a company. This influences their buying behavior and in choosing a particular brand. Also, the investors and stakeholders make investment decision based on the sustainability report of the companies. Considering the prominence of sustainability reporting on business, the companies are required to maintain them since it is related to credibility and trust in any corporate organization by its stakeholders, investors and customers.

KEY BENEFITS OF SUSTAINABILITY REPORTING

• Achieve sustainability: Sustainability reporting in corporate brings a sense of commitment towards people, environment and society. Today, businesses and companies cannot progress only through financial performance. Maintaining a valid sustainability document is a necessity for the overall growth of any organization.
• Stay compliant with rules and regulation: Various governmental organization in the current scenario gives more emphasize on staying sustainable to reduce the impacts of climate change. Sustainability reporting ensures that the companies are compliant with the new rules and regulations related to sustainable development
• Build trust among customers: A recent study reveals that consumers are more in to sustainable products and believe that the companies should pay more attention towards the environment. They are willing to spend more on products that have sustainable values. A transparent Sustainability Reporting help them take a wise decision considering the sustainable performance of the company and products
• Attract Investors: Sustainability Reporting achieves the trust and confidence of investors in terms of reputation and competitiveness. Investors and stakeholders take important decisions on investment and business activities based the company’s sustainability document. This helps them plan and manage the business in the long run.
• Increase Transparency and Credibility: Having a transparent document on sustainability increases the credibility of the company among stakeholders, consumers and employees. Through sustainability reporting, the company communicates with large mass of audience, their intention regarding the progress towards the goal of sustainable development, various measures taken by them to reduce the impacts of activities on environment and the extend up to which they achieved the concept of sustainability in business.

STEPS FOR SUSTAINABILITY REPORTING

1. Identify the purpose of reporting: Companies must have clear aims and objectives regarding the purpose of sustainability reporting. Clear cut questions needs to be addressed and the resultant information should beproperly communicated with the target audience. The audience of reporting may include stakeholders, investors, employees and customers.
2. Decide what to report: Companies need to decide whatthey should report in order to develop a strategy for materiality analysis. Materiality assessment is done to check the impacts of business on sustainability.
3. Gather data: qualitative and quantitative data is to be collected by the company on all the areas. The collected data must be relevant and accurate.
4. Review and Publish report: The report goes through an internal approval process to ensure accuracy and quality. Once approved, the report is finalized and ready to publish
5. Refine and Review to improve: At this stage, the companies may look for further improvements and update the report to increase transparency

SUSTAINABILITY REPORTING PROCESS

 FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ON SUSTAINABILITY REPORTING

1. What kind of information is usually included in sustainability reporting?
   

   Ans) Sustainability Reporting can include a wide range of information like a company’s social, environmental, and economic performance and the impact of business activities. This may include details like consumption of environmental resources like energy, fossil fuels, water and techniques utilized for waste management and pollution control. Information on related risks and opportunities on climate change and greenhouse gas emission can also be communicated through sustainable reporting. The future strategic plans and policies of the company for improving the sustainable performance also is communicated.

2. Why do companies produce corporate sustainability reports?
   

   Ans) Companies produce sustainability reports to communicate their policies and actions to achieve sustainability. Financial factors alone cannot determine the growth and performance of a company. Non financial factors like environment and society also influence them in terms of efficiency, transparency and reputation. This help the customers and stakeholders take wise decision on purchasing and investment respectively which eventually enhances global competitiveness. Sustainability reporting also helps companies to cut costs, enable easier access to capital, improve financial performance and increase stability

3. What are the benefits of Sustainability Reporting? 

   Ans) Sustainability Reporting helps the organization and stakeholders in the long term planning and governance, take innovative decision to manage risks and utilize opportunities. It increases awareness on risk management, reduce costs, increases transparency and improves efficiency. It protects the company from risks of environmental, social and governance failures.

4. What are governments doing to support and promote sustainability reporting?

   Ans) Governments largely encourage corporate sustainability reporting through legislation and regulatory initiatives and by providing guidelines and procedures to the private sectors with an aim to trigger good business practices and competitiveness, transparency and progress towards sustainable development.

5. How many business at present prepare sustainability report?

   Ans) Majority of the Multi National Companies produce their sustainability reports and keep updating their sustainable performance. The recent studies reveal the increasing rate of companies who produce sustainability reports

6. What are the costs involved for companies to prepare sustainability report?

   Ans) The cost for preparing sustainability report vary according to the type of companies. Factors that contribute to the cost of issuing sustainability reports include the cost for data collection, report preparation and publishing. Costs associated with implementing new process is also included to the cost components

7. What initiatives and frameworks exist to guide the companies with sustainable reporting?

   Ans) Variety of private companies and voluntary organizations help the companies with sustainability reporting by suggesting and offering a suitable frameworks and reporting systems, guidelines and standards to create a better sustainability report.

WAEY FOR SUSTAINABILITY REPORTING

WAEY Environmental Consultancy and Trading is a Qatar based company functioning with an aim of availing environmental and sustainability solutions to the clients. WAEY has a passionate team of environmental professionals with an experience of  over 30 years in energy and environmental management, environmental compliance to Qatari regulations and waste management. The Consultancy has a team with diverse technical expertise with the major environmental and sustainable practices with approach that follows local regulations, International guidelines and best global practices. Our key services include industrial, environmental, sustainability, certification and environmental clearance. WAEY has certifications and membership from Life Cycle Initiative, ACLCA and Mendeley Advisor Community including journals and book chapters publication in Elsevier and Springer.

WAEY serves their clients in issuing sustainability Report by using an appropriate ESG framework. WAEY strives to achieve the long term goals of all stakeholders and clients, also collaborating with both private and public sectors. WAEY helps our clients to successfully navigate development projects with efficiency bound to sustainability. Clients get assured that the information in ESG report from WAEY has been thoroughly investigated and verified to meet objectives of both the parties through Business to Business transaction.

Image Source: Source: https://sustainlab.co/blog/5-steps-to-write-an-impactful-sustainability-reporting