Chapter 8 – Global Reporting Initiative

This chapter provides an overview of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), which has become the most widely used framework for sustainability reporting in the world. The chapter describes the development of the GRI over the past 20 years, and how the evolution from standards guidelines has been adopted. The reader is introduced to the development of the different versions of guidelines from G3 / G3.1 to G4 to the GRI Sustainability Reporting Standards introduced in 2016. The most important features of the structure of the standards are briefly described to give an overview of how detailed comparability of sustainability information can be achieved. Furthermore, we briefly present how GRI collaborates with various organizations to strengthen sustainability reporting. Finally, criticism of GRI and the challenges it faces are discussed.