The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) is an independent, international, nonprofit organisation working to standardise environmental reporting. It is committed to developing and disseminating environmental reporting standards. Its aim? To help companies, governments and organisations measure, identify and communicate their impact on sustainable development issues.
Launched in 1997 by an American NGO, the GRI is supported by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
Operating principle
The GRI has drawn up a number of standards that fall into four main categories: universal standards (GRI 100), economic standards (GRI 200), environmental standards (GRI 300) and social standards (GRI 400).
A report that complies with these standards provides a complete overview of :
- An organisation’s key issues
- The related impacts
- And how these impacts are managed.
Good to know: an organisation can use all or only some of the selected standards to report on specific information that concerns it.
For example, a company could use a number of these standards to produce a CSR report that is not subject to the EPFD obligations.
All of these standards have been available in French since 8 March 2018.
Benefits and limitations of a GRI declaration
Compliance with the guidelines established by the Global Reporting Initiative is entirely voluntary.
This is why subscribing and declaring to the GRI does not entail any verification procedure or result in obtaining any label.
However, subscribing to the GRI demonstrates a commitment to transparency and to improving our ESG performance in line with internationally recognised standards.
In 20 years, more than 13,000 organisations worldwide have filed over 55,000 reports.
As far as France is concerned, in 2016, 39 companies submitted a report. 67 named GRI without fully applying it.
It is not known how many real estate companies or investors took part in the exercise. It is probably quite low. On the other hand, all the environmental standards applicable to property funds themselves use the Global Reporting Initiative standards.
