There is no single global rulebook for sustainability reporting, but a small number of frameworks dominate. Knowing what each is designed for makes the choice much easier.
The main frameworks
- GRI Standards: designed for reporting a company's impacts on the economy, environment and people. Widely used by organisations with a broad stakeholder audience.
- IFRS S1 and S2 (ISSB): issued by the International Sustainability Standards Board to give investors consistent information on sustainability-related risks and opportunities, including climate.
- TCFD (now folded into IFRS S2): the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures was wound up in 2023 and its monitoring passed to the IFRS Foundation. Its structure of governance, strategy, risk management, metrics and targets lives on in IFRS S2.
- UN Sustainable Development Goals: not a reporting standard, but a useful common language for showing how your activities contribute to global priorities.
Choosing between them
Start with your audience. If your main readers are investors and lenders, disclosure aligned to IFRS S1 and S2 is increasingly the reference point. If you need to communicate with communities, regulators, customers and civil society, GRI gives a broader picture. Many companies use GRI for the full report and map to IFRS S1 and S2 for the investor-facing sections.
Pick the framework your readers already use, then build a data process you can repeat every year.
Start small, build up
A first report does not need to cover everything. Focus on your material topics, be transparent about what you can and cannot yet measure, and set out how you will improve. Credibility comes from consistency and honesty, not from length.
