What are the key drivers of sustainability reporting ?

Following are the key drivers of sustainability reporting: Regulations: Governments at most levels have stepped up the pressure on corporations to ensure the impact of their operations on the environment. Legislation is becoming more innovative and is covering an ever wider range of activities. The most notable shift has been from voluntary to mandatory sustainability monitoring and reporting. Customers: Public opinion and consumer preferences are a more abstract but powerful factor that exerts considerable influence on companies, particularly those that are consumer oriented. Customers significantly influence a company's reputation through their purchasing choices and brand. Loyalty: This factor has led firms to provide much more information about the products they produce, the suppliers who produce them, and the product's environmental impact from creation to disposal. NGO's and the media: Public reaction comes not just from customers but from advocates and the media, who shape public opinion. Advocacy organisations, if ignored or slighted, can damage brand value. Employees: Those who work for a company bring particular pressure to bear on how employers behave; they, too, are concerned citizens beyond their corporate roles. Peer pressure from other companies: Each company is part of an industry, with the peer pressures and alliances that go along with it. Matching industry standards for sustainability reporting can be a factor; particularly for those who operate in the same supply chain and have environmental or social standards they expect of their partners. There is a growing trend for large companies to request sustainability information from their suppliers as part of their evaluation criteria. Companies themselves: Corporations, as public citizens, feel their own pressure to create a credible sustainability policy, with performance measures to back it up, but with an eye on the bottom line as well. Increasingly, stakeholders are demanding explicit sustainability reporting strategies and a proof of the results. So, too, are CEOs, who consider sound social and environmental policies a critical element of corporate success. Companies report that integrated reporting drives them to re-examine processes with an eye towards resource allocation, waste elimination and efficiency improvements. Investors: Increasingly, investors want to know that companies they have targeted have responsible, sustainable, long-term business approaches. Institutional investors and stock exchange CEOs, for example, have moved to request increased sustainability reporting from listed companies, and environmental, social and corporate governance indices have been established such as the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. The Carbon Disclosure Project was developed in response to investor demand for a system for firms to measure and report greenhouse gas emissions and climate change strategies as a tool to set reduction targets and set individual goals.