Good Practices - Possible Solutions - Environmental Reporting

A Corporate Environmental Report (CER) is a tool to communicate a company's environmental performance. It is used to demonstrate company-wide integrated environmental management systems, corporate responsibility and the implementation of voluntary initiatives and codes of conduct. In addition to satisfying stakeholders' demands, a CER is also a good way for a company itself to track its own progress and identify internal strengths and weaknesses. It permits a company and its stakeholders to measure the company's adherence to its defined environmental policies, goals and objectives and it allows stakeholders to participate in corporate goal-setting.

Moreover, combining environmental reporting with social and economic reporting provides information on a company's performance against the "triple bottom line" of sustainability.

It is important to underline that the CER is a means to environmental improvement and greater accountability, not an end in itself.

Established Focus	Emerging Focus
One-way passive communication	Multi-way, active dialogue
Verification as an option	Verification as standard
Single company progress reporting management system	Benchmarkability life-cycles, business design, strategy
Inputs and outputs	Impacts and Outcomes
Ad-hoc operating standards	Global operating standards
Public relations	Corporate governance
Voluntary reporting	Mandatory reporting
Company determines reporting boundaries	Boundaries set through stakeholder dialogue
Environmental performance	Triple bottom line

Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) [http://www.globalreporting.org/] - This is the website for the international multi-stakeholder effort on effort on developing globally accepted guidelines for voluntary use by organisations for reporting on the economic, environmental, and social aspects of their activities. The site explains the development of the initiative and the resultant Guidelines. It provides access to the Guidelines, information on pilot testing as well as GRI news and contact information.

Centre for Social and Environmental Accounting Research – Univ. of Glasgow [http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/accounting/] - CSEAR has moved to the University of Glasgow since 1 August 2000. The new website is still under construction. The new CSEAR site will be on-line very soon.

This site provides a variety of information on social and environmental accounting. There is an on-line directory that allows users to access a journal and bibliographic sources. There is also an on-line database of corporate disclosure statements, gateway and research sites, conference and e-mail lists, magazines and news as well as listings of institutions (private, government and NGOs) that work on related issues. There is also access to a biannual newsletter, Social and Environmental Accounting.

Corporate Environmental Reports Centre for Environmental Informatics – Sunderland University [http://cei.sund.ac.uk/core.htm] - This site provides links to over 100 corporate websites and over 60 social and ethical reporting resources. It also provides a link to the Environmental Reporting Clearinghouse.

The International Corporate Environmental Reporting [http://www.enviroreporting.com/] - This site houses information on environmental performance measuring and accounting, financial institutes and the environment, and environmental performance and shareholder value/financial results. The site also offers a section with international news, an Internet Web directory with links to information related to CER, and an overview of world-wide CER Awards Schemes. From this site, users can also access "The CER Plaza", an overview of relevant organisations, media, consultant firms and research institutes that work on corporate environmental reporting. For those interested in the Netherlands, there is a special news section on Dutch reporting issues, a directory with links to all on-line CERs of companies located in the Netherlands as well as access to the Dutch national register of CERs.

Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economics (CERES) [http://ceres.org/] - This site provides information on the CERES principles, the structure of the organisation, its work on environmental reporting and its other programmes.

Corporate Social Reporting [http://www.sustainability.co.uk/sustainability.htm] - The SustainAbility website outlines the organisation's work in corporate reporting in co-operation with UNEP. It also provides information on available publications.

Tomorrow Magazine [http://www.tomorrow-web.com/] - Through this website, users can directly access numerous company CERs.