Towards a Generally Accepted Framework for Environmental Reporting
This paper is a revision and update of the discussion paper published in 1999 by taking into account all responses received and developments since its publication. More attention needs to be paid to the various qualitative reporting characteristics which should underpin the emerging practice of corporate environmental reporting, if that practice is eventually to achieve anything approaching the same degree of public acceptance and credibility as financial reporting.
FEE believes that many of the qualitative aspects of the paper will be seen to have general applicability to other forms of reporting such as: social/community impacts, business ethics, human rights, animal testing, sustainability. Much of the framework proposed by FEE in the February 1999 version has been absorbed into the “General Reporting Principles” section of the GRI Sustainability Reporting Guidelines.
The paper explicitly covers the objective of environmental reporting; users and their information needs; the underlying assumptions of environmental reporting; the importance of qualitative characteristics in environmental reporting; and contents of environmental reports.