Sustainability and Transparency

• Transparency is more than honesty; it involves openly sharing information without being asked, fostering trust.
• Transparency in sustainability reporting builds trust and demonstrates accountability to stakeholders.
• Companies face growing pressure from regulatory bodies, investors, and consumers to disclose their sustainability impacts.
• Being transparent by reporting on both positive and negative impacts ensures credibility.
• Transparency aligns with global standards and best practices and avoids greenwashing.
• Meeting evolving legal requirements, which vary across regions and industries, is part of transparency.
• Transparency builds trust, strengthens stakeholder relationships, and drives long-term financial performance.

Sustainability Reporting Frameworks

• Global Reporting Initiative (GRI): A widely used standard for sustainability reporting, covering environmental impacts, labor practices, human rights, and corruption.
• Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD): Addresses climate-related financial risks, encouraging disclosure of climate change impacts on operations, governance, strategy, and risk management.
• Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB): Focuses on the financial materiality of sustainability issues, providing sector-specific standards for disclosing ESG factors affecting financial performance.

Key Sustainability Reporting Framework

• Sustainable frameworks enhance reputation and brand loyalty, attracting conscious consumers and investors, motivating employees, ensuring compliance, and fostering community support.
• Sustainable frameworks improve public image, drive long-term success, and build resilience.
• Risk management and compliance are essential in sustainability reporting frameworks, helping identify and mitigate ESG risks, enhance resilience, protect value, and improve transparency.
• Risk management and compliance build trust and meet stakeholder expectations.
• Operational efficiency optimizes resources, reduces waste and environmental impact, ensures compliance, saves costs, drives innovation, builds trust, and enhances sustainability.
• Efficient operations lead to better performance, lower costs, and a positive reputation, contributing to the overall success.
• Sustainability reporting frameworks attract investment by demonstrating a company's commitment to responsible and transparent practices, building investor confidence.
• Innovation and competitive advantage in sustainability reporting frameworks enable companies to develop sustainable practices, enhance market position, and drive long-term growth.
• Innovation improves operational efficiency, reduces environmental impact, and meets evolving stakeholder expectations, attracting customers, investors, and talent.
• Sustainability focus ensures regulatory compliance, builds a positive reputation, and fosters resilience in a changing market.

The Importance of Transparency in Sustainability Reporting

• Consumers increasingly care about environmental and social issues, supporting companies that are honest about sustainability efforts.
• Investors seek companies that manage environmental and social risks well, using transparent reporting for informed decisions.
• Governments mandate sustainability reporting, making transparency more important for companies.
• Businesses are expected to show their responsibility for their impact on the world.
• Social media increases business visibility, requiring transparency to protect reputation.
• Openness helps businesses stand out, attract customers, and keep investors happy, leading to long-term growth.

Greenwashing

• Greenwashing involves false or misleading claims about environmental or social practices to appear more responsible.

Risk Not Being Transparent or Greenwashing

• Lack of honesty about sustainability leads to losing trust from customers and investors.
• Misleading claims can result in legal trouble with fines and lawsuits.
• Negative press can damage the company's image.
• Dishonest brands may lose customers who stop buying their products.
• Transparent companies attract more customers and investors, while dishonest ones fall behind competitors.
• Financial loss can occur as stock prices and investor confidence drop.
• Greenwashing harms real efforts to protect the environment.

How Can Businesses in the Philippines Ensure Their Reports Are Trustworthy?

• Obtain certifications from trusted bodies like B Corp, Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP), or ISO 14001 to prove sustainability efforts.
• Share specific figures, such as energy usage, waste management, and carbon footprint, to provide clear evidence of your sustainability.
• Acknowledge areas that need improvement to show transparency and genuine commitment to sustainability.

How Transparency in Sustainability Reporting Builds Stakeholder Trust

• Companies are responsible for their actions and progress, proving their commitment to sustainability.
• Clear, honest reporting builds consumer confidence, ensuring customers trust the brand's genuine commitment.
• Investors rely on reliable data to make informed decisions, strengthening investor trust and relationships.

Overview of Sustainability Reporting Frameworks

• Sustainability Reporting Frameworks include the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), and Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD).

Three Series of GRI Standards

• UNIVERSAL STANDARDS: Mandatory for all organizations using GRI, covering general disclosure requirements and how to identify material topics.
• SECTOR STANDARDS: Provide guidance for specific industries, highlighting relevant sustainability issues like those in oil and gas, agriculture, or mining.
• TOPIC STANDARDS: Detail specific disclosures related to individual sustainability topics, allowing organizations to choose the most relevant ones.

Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Activities

• The GRI creates standards for sustainability reporting that are globally applicable, comparable, and consistent.
• The GRI database stores and monitors corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports.
• The Global Sustainability Standards Board (GSSB) reviews existing GRI standards and helps develop new ones.
• The GRI creates supplementary standards for specific industries.
• The GRI has developed basic indicators and sector supplements, such as the Mining and Metals Sector Supplement.
• The GRI helps organizations report on their economic, environmental, and social impacts.
• The GRI helps organizations be more transparent and accountable.
• The GRI helps organizations engage with their stakeholders.
• The GRI helps organizations manage risks and opportunities.

Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Practices

• Materiality assessment: Identify the most significant sustainability issues relevant to an based on stakeholder engagement and potential impact analysis.
• GRI covers a broad range of sustainability topics, including environmental performance, social impacts, and economic contributions.
• GRI Standards are designed to be flexible, allowing organizations to choose indicators and disclosures that align with operations and industry.
• GRI emphasizes engaging with stakeholders throughout the reporting process to understand their concerns and priorities regarding sustainability.

Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB)

• Sustainability dimensions cover broad themes like Environment, Social Capital, Human Capital, Business Model & Innovation, and Leadership & Governance.
• General Issue Categories (GIC): These are industry agnostic topics, represented as rows in the SASB Materiality Map.
• Disclosure topics: Include industry-specific versions of the GICs, averaging six per industry.
• Accounting metrics: These are Quantitative and qualitative indicators measuring performance on each disclosure topic, averaging 13 per industry.

Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) Activities & Practices

• Climate Risk Identification & Scenario Analysis assess physical risks.
• Governance & Oversight of climate risks sets climate risks strategies aligned with business objectives.
• Financial Disclosure of climate risks & Opportunities reports how climate risks affect revenues, assets, and liabilities.
• Setting and monitoring Climate targets establishes GHG (Greenhouse Gas) reduction targets.

Impacts of Choosing a Right Framework in Company's Sustainability Reporting

• It ensures that the company focuses on the most relevant issues to its operation, risks, and opportunities.
• It build trust with stakeholders by providing clear, reliable, and relevant information on sustainability performance.
• Helps the company comply with national and international regulations and avoid potential legal risks
• It enhances the company's ability to manage and mitigate risks, particularly those related to climate change, resource scarcity, and social issues

Advantages of using one framework over another

• Companies can ensure they meet legal and financial reporting requirements in their operating jurisdiction.
• A well-established framework enhances investor trust by providing consistency and comparability of financial information.
• Using a single framework simplifies internal reporting processes, reducing complexity and costs associated with reconciling multiple standards
• Frameworks align companies with environmental, social, and governance (ESG) expectations, improving corporate reputation and stakeholder trust.

Factors to consider in Chooseing a framework

• Certain industries may have specific reporting needs
• Companies must comply with local accounting and reporting standards
• Investors, customers, employees, and regulators may expect certain types of disclosures.

Pros and Cons of having multiple frameworks in a Company

• Helps multinational companies comply with different jurisdictions' accounting and reporting requirements.
• Increases investor and stakeholder confidence by covering different aspects of business reporting
• Different stakeholders have diverse reporting needs.

Cons of having multiple frameworks in a Company

• Managing multiple frameworks requires aligning different reporting structures, which can be challenging.
• More frameworks mean additional administrative work, requiring more staff, training, and technology.
• Companies may face reporting fatigue due to frequent updates and reporting deadlines across frameworks.

Effective Strategies That Must Follow When Aligning in Multiple Frameworks

• Many frameworks share similar sustainability metrics so, companies can may overlapping disclosures to streamline reporting.
• Companies can adopt one comprehensive framework as a core structure and supplement it with elements from others to meet stakeholder needs.
• Sustainability reporting software can help track and integrate different framework requirements, ensuring consistency and efficiency.
• Companies should prioritize frameworks required by regulators and preferred by investors while ensuring alignment with internal sustainability goals.
• Involving finance, sustainability, and compliance teams ensures that different frameworks are addressed cohesively without duplication of efforts.

Materiality Assessment in Sustainability Reporting

• It is a formal exercise aimed at engaging external stakeholder to find out how important Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) issues are to them.

Concept of Materiality

• Not all factors are equally relevant or important to every organization.
• It involves understanding the concerns and priorities of stakeholders, including investors, customers, employees and communities.
• Organizations can avoid spreading their resources too thin and ensure that their efforts have the greatest impact.
• Organizations can demonstrate their commitment to sustainability and measure the effectiveness of their initiatives.
• It informs sustainability reporting by guiding organizations to disclose information on the issues that are most relevant to their business and stakeholder.

The Importance of Materiality Assessment in ESG

• With the world increasingly striving for net-zero emissions, the relevance of this assessment has skyrocketed.
• It illuminates various ESG challenges that could potentially derail a company's journey towards environmental and economic prosperity

How to Conduct a Materiality Assessment?

• Understand what you intend to achieve with the materiality assessment Ensure that the list of material topics is compiled in consultation with relevant individuals beyond the sustainability team
• Materiality, in this context, refers to the significance of a topic to your stakeholders, its socio-economic or environmental impact, and its strategic relevance to your business Define the regions or business units to be assessed and decide how the outcomes will feed into your reporting.
• Gather data from multiple sources like media reports, internal data, sector-specific regulations, ratings, and research on wider social and environmental trends.
• Ensure that the list of material topics is compiled in consultation with relevant individuals beyond the sustainability team.
• Identify which external stakeholders you should consult for valuable feedback.
• Refine the list of potential material topics by grouping them into relevant categories
• Align topic names with the existing terminology, strategy, and policies used by your organisation.
• Collect data about the importance of each material topic to your stakeholders and assess the strategic significance of each topic to the business Evaluate the actual and potential economic, social, and environmental impacts of each topic
• Decide which internal stakeholders should be involved in prioritising topics, develop a scoring methodology for each topic, and set a threshold for defining which topics will be considered material
• Work closely with enterprise risk management to integrate material social and environmental topics into company-wide risk management.
• Ensure that the materiality assessment is accepted
• Recommend actions for the board based on the outcomes of the materiality assessment.
• Invite stakeholders to review the material topics published and evaluate the outcome of your materiality assessment before you repeat the process
• Record results from stakeholder input and describe the impact this will have on future reporting.

How to Identify ESG Issues That Are Most Relevant to An organization's Stakeholders?

• Identify your stakeholders
• Engage with your stakeholders
• Prioritize ESG
• Analyze and Validate
• Integrate into Strategy

Data Collection, Verification, and Reporting in Sustainability

• Different department silos have different sections and making aggregation and analysis a hard task
• The supply chains are complex and the data is collected from their suppliers is not easy.
• Sustainability metric measurements may involve lead to differences in interpretation or reporting.
• Higher spending on technology, human resource, and training has to be made to promote thorough data collection and verification systems

Challenges in Data Verification

• The lack of universal acceptance leaves comparisons between companies difficult and check adequate verification.
• The adequacy and cost of available auditors can be a hindrance, especially for small businesses.
• A potential area of concern relates to data manipulation or errors.

Overcoming the Challenges

• Data management systems are essential to integrate information from disparate sources and would streamline the collection and analysis of data
• Applying generally accepted frameworks and metrics for this will ensure consistency and comparability
• A strong data governance framework including policies, roles, responsibilities, data quality checks, and audits will be established.
• It is important to work with suppliers, customers, and other stakeholders to ensure full and reliable data collection through the entire value chain
• Ensuring that employees have the necessary skills and knowledge for collecting and managing sustainability data is key.

Data Typically Collected in Sustainability Reports

• It Constitutes a very large share of most reports.
• The numerous facets of social data revolve around the impact of the firm on its workforce and key data include:
• This area is concerned with the ethics adopted by the company and data key to this category include:

Evaluation of the sustainability data

• There are a number of ways to improve such data verification include:
• Usually be acquired from the audit and verification of reported data by an independent third party
• All data management systems must be put in place if accuracy in data and better analysis of data have to be achieved.
• Compliance with internationally recognized standard sustainability reporting framework enhances comparison and increases the credibility of the reporting.
• Should be included in that report.
• Viewed as a dynamic process continually improving.

How do Company ensure the Data is Accurate

• Some strategies with their significance in the maintenance of data integrity over time include:
• establishing a well-designed data governance framework is the essential in the collection, validation, and cleanup of data should all be accomplished
• Different data validation techniques are used to ensure that the data conforms and identify inconsistencies or errors.
• processes eliminate duplicates, correct errors, and standardize data formats to improve both the accuracy and consistency of data.
• Proper standardization of reduces ambiguity and errors using consistent terminology and units of measurement.
• It tracks the changes made to data with time

Should Sustainability Data be Integrated Into Annual Financial Reports?

• Integrating material sustainability metrics ensures transparency, for investors to easily evaluate the risks and opportunities of the company.
• A standardized integration would see much easier comparisons among
• For companies, one report means less hassle and more efficiency.

A sustainability reporting along separate lines

• Having space enough appropriate to understand challenging aspects of sustainability
• Separate reports allow the use of various reporting frameworks and better shaping of disclosures to the particular stakeholders
• The financial report remains focused on the core financials and more readable.
• Allows taking up without agitation of structuring in financial reporting

Challenges on Sustainability Reporting

• Investors can acquire a holistic view of performance, more administrative burden
• Increases the administrative burden and costs for such institutions or companies.
• Lack of standardization can hinder comparability against each other

Main points on Challenges, Overcoming the Challenges on Sustainability

• It involves compiling and presenting the collected data in a structured format to communicate an organization's ESG performance to stakeholders.

Elements of sustainability reporting

• Explaining what it meant, goals and strategies
• Presenting data in number for example footprints
• To make the data more accessible and understandable
• Ensuring the report adheres to recognized reporting frameworks and standards

Sustainability Data Collection

• It involves gathering information related to an organization's environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance.

Internal systems

• Leveraging existing company databases and management systems to extract relevant data.

Sustainability Verification

• Involves ensuring the accuracy, completeness, and reliability of the reported data
• Conducting reviews within the organization to validate the collected data
• Engaging independent auditors to verify the accuracy and credibility of the sustainability report
• Using decentralized and tamper-proof ledgers to enhance data transparency and verification
• Implementing automated compliance checks to ensure adherence to sustainability regulations and standards

How Can Technology Help Enhancing the

• It's streamlining the collection and analysis of vast datasets.
• It enhancing the transparency and credibility of ESG reporting
• Advanced data analytics tools help organizations gain deep insights into their performance

Key points on How Can Technology Help Enhancing the

• They can help automate data collection, reduce human error, and
• Enhance the traceability of sustainability claims

How will Technologies make sustainability Reporting

• Data is still a struggle
• Still there are different methodologies, making comparisons difficult
• Digital systems are to vulnerable to cyberattacks, manipulation, or breaches, which can undermine trust in the reporting process.
• Creating monopolies
• Putting small and medium-sized at a disadvantage in corporations
• Leading to misleading conclusions that a company's sustainability performance

Key points on How will Technologies make sustainability Reporting

• Driven by Al and chain technologies can the data From to performance updates
• Allows them to take corrective action before issues escalate.

Challenges to Overcome

• Processing vast amounts of real-time ESG data requires robust infrastructure and advanced analytics to extract meaningful insights.
• Integrate multiple data sources across global operations, requiring standardized formats and protocols Continuous data collection raises risks related to cybersecurity and misuse of proprietary information.

Universal Standards:

• GRI 1 serves as the starting point for organizations implementing GRI Standards
• It sets out the principles for defining report content and quality

Key point of the Purpose of the GRI Standards

• To enhance transparency and accountability by helping organizations report their significant economic, environmental, and social impacts, including human rights
• The GRI Standards help the people to sustainable development targets

Key Concept of the GRI 1

• The effect that organization's activates or on environment or society The topics the reports must includes the importance to the organization

Key point in the GRI 1 concept reporting

• The processes to follow to prevent negative reports

Key Elements of the report for stakeholders

• Used used the standards to understand how to assess report
• Financial risks, opportunities, and what makes them successful success Can do the following: Benchmarking reporting is: Accurate, Balanced, Clarity, comparability, Completeness, timeless

Essential Reporting Principles

• The stakeholders should be aware
• Balance the key components
• Clarity of the report
• Completeness
• It needs to be relevant at any given time

Key Factors for Accuracy Reports

• Provide an overview of the organization
• activities of the overall organization: Its employees, knowledge, and others
• The disclosure on practice in the organization Disclosures has expectations

Steps To Determine Material Topics

• Understanding the
• Understanding the organization's context and impact on what's actually happening
• Impact the organization or assess the significance of the impacts to prioritize them
• The most impact for reporting that what needs to for their