We live in turbulent times with globally uncertain economic and social times in modern history; the financial crisis, climate change, and ecological disasters threaten the world daily. Currently, stock exchanges in some major markets have started to include sustainability as part of their listing requirements, and the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) comes into effect in Jan 2023. Despite the fact that a lot of sustainability initiatives or reporting standards have occurred at the international level through voluntary standards or aspirational guidelines, sustainability metrics and goals have become important focal point for internal and external stakeholders.
Companies are under increasing pressure from investors, shareholders, customers, governments, NGOs and the public to do more to address environmental, ecological, and societal challenges by disclosing their sustainability performance, and measuring progress against a committed sustainable business agenda.
Due to the various green claims and inconsistency in reporting quality, sustainability reporting or advertising can create opportunities for misleading, mis-selling, or greenwashing. Governments and regulators are taking action to combat greenwashing and misleading claims, helping customers and investors make well-informed and conscious decisions. One of the ways to address greenwashing is to enhance the transparency and creditability of a corporate by understanding relevant standards, regulations, reporting requirements, and identifying the cause of corporate risks through independent third-party sustainability reporting assurance.
How can SGS help?
Providing independent sustainability risk, external environmental, social and governance (ESG) and materiality evaluation, audit and verification of ESG data, disclosures, systems and ESG financial instruments to increase stakeholder confidence and trust.
• Support companies in their ambitions to disclose their sustainability performance with transparency, credibility, and accuracy.
• Offer independent assurance of ESG Disclosures and/or Sustainability Report against international standards and framework, such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the AA 1000 Accountability Principles (2018).
• Help corporates comply with relevant regulations and reporting requirements.
• Identify gaps between stakeholders’ expectations and actions taken in practice.
• Mitigate and go beyond corporate’s financial risk through ESG risk evaluation and due diligence service through external expertise and verifications.
• Build a sustainable corporate and brand.
At SGS, we work to support the actions of our clients in understanding sustainability performance disclosure, and reducing their non-financial risk. To find out more about the ESG and sustainability assurance solutions that we work with, please contact us at hk.cbe@sgs.com to find out more.