Gambling on Green

Chapter 9ESG Frameworks and Voluntary Standards

A wide variety of stakeholders, from investors to NGOs, depend on corporate sustainability reporting for a number of reasons: one is to assist with decision-making for providing capital; another is to learn about challenges and opportunities in the ESG space. Interest in ESG investing has sparked the growth of numerous organizations, all working to meet the need for reliable and consistent data.¹ Various standards and frameworks facilitate the disclosure of information about corporate ESG actions and plans for improvement. Business leaders are usually familiar with where sustainability info is reported: annual reports and sustainability reports are pretty simple to find. Understanding what to report is the thing that usually gives executives pause.

If you are confused as to which organizations are supposed to help with which element of your sustainability reporting, you are not alone. Many professionals in corporate and investment sectors bemoan the “alphabet soup” of organizations with acronyms for names. And if professionals occasionally become frustrated with the sheer number of organizations, sorting through them all can be extremely daunting for those without a background in the sustainability field. Nonetheless, executives at every level need to understand which framework or standard provides what level of detail.

This chapter will give you some background on some of the commonly used standards and frameworks and how they ...