Sustainability reporting can help organizations to measure, understand and communicate their economic, environmental, social and governance performance, set goals, and manage change more effectively, but many organizatio

The Sustainability Reporting is relatively a new concept. Many organizations find it difficult to prepare sustainability REPORT. Following may be considered as the challenges in mainstreaming sustainability reporting: 1. Government Encouragement: In many jurisdictions, there are no guidelines on sustainability reporting to encourage the corporate sector to prepare sustainability report. While on the other hand, there are voluntary as well as mandatory guidelines from regulators for reporting on Sustainability aspects like in India we have SEBI framework of Business Responsibility Report. In South Africa, listed companies are required to prepare Integrated Report which is one step ahead of sustainability reporting. It is the need of the hour that governments should encourage the corporate in their jurisdiction to adopt the sustainability reporting as a measure of good corporate governance. 2. Awareness: lack of awareness about the emerging concept of sustainability reporting is also a major challenge which the government and corporate governance bodies need to address by arranging the sustainability awareness programme for the Professionals, Board of Directors and Management in the corporate sector, as these are the persons who will drive sustainability reporting initiative for an organisation. The government/regulators should organize such awareness programme jointly with the experts in the field of Sustainability Reporting. 3. Expertise Knowledge: Sustainability Reporting is relatively a new concept in many jurisdictions and organization found it very difficult to prepare a sustainability report in the absence of expert guidance on the subject. The Sustainability Reporting concept is emerging as a good tool to showcase the corporate governance practices of an organisation and this area demand professionals having expert knowledge of sustainability reporting. The professional bodies in various jurisdictions should impart the expert knowledge of sustainability reporting to their members to develop a good cadre of experts in this emerging area of sustainability reporting. 4. Investor Behaviour: It is a recognized principle that investors should consider the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) issues while making investment decisions. There are specific regulators guidelines for the institutional investor to be vigilant on voting aspects and be concerned about the governance practices of the companies in which they invest. However, the investor behaviour may vary from company to company and sometimes they invest in companies without considering the ESG issues either due to lack of awareness on ESG issues or some other business reasons. It should be made a practice that the investor fund flow to those organization following the good governance including reporting on sustainability aspects.