I’ve been spending some time recently doing a little analysis of online GRI reporting, which has involved looking at their indicator sets and how these are reported by organizations. This led me to BP and MM12 and the need to re-emphasize that for reporting to work you have to report…
This is what BP says about its GRI sustainability reporting:
BP’s 2009 Sustainability Review is aligned to the GRI’s G3 sustainability reporting guidelines released in 2006, to an A+ level. Key to achieving this was the strict application of our materiality process to ensure that we only reported on those G3 indicators that are relevant to our businesses. For indicators that we have not reported, we have provided detail on why we have not included certain information or indicators in our report.
BP’s GRI report was externally assured by Ernst & Young. This is what E&Y had to say about materiality:
Has BP provided a balanced representation of material issues concerning BP’s sustainability performance?
- With the exception of the subject areas listed below, we are not aware of any material aspects concerning BP’s sustainability performance which have been excluded from the Report.
- We consider that BP could have covered the following subject areas in more depth in the Report:
- Influencing the performance of business partners in relation to sustainability issues
- Disclosure of future environmental performance targets.
Given these statements, I was curious to understand how BP had reported GRI Labor Practices & Decent Work indicator MM12 which is defined as:
Describe approach to identifying, preparing for, and responding to emergency situations affecting employees, communities, or the environment. Include a description of the nature of existing skills, teams who respond to emergency situations, training, drills, review processes and community involvement.
So like any interested stakeholder (I buy BP fuel from my local gas station), aware of the Gulf of Mexico spill, I went looking for MM12 in BP’s A+, externally assured online GRI report (on July 5th, 2010 if you are interested). I couldn’t find it anywhere. Maybe it’s there or buried in some PDF somewhere but I couldn’t find it online -not in the Economic or Environmental or Social indicator sections of the report.
Now maybe the reason I couldn’t find it is because ‘MM’ indicates that this is an indicator specific to the GRI Mining and Metals sector supplement – the oil & gas indicator supplement is not yet released by the GRI. M&M GRI filers like Newmont Mining and Freeport-McMoran report this indicator and link to information to evidence their compliance (whether you find this information reassuring or not is up to you).
So should BP have reported this indicator – even though it relates to another GRI ‘sector’? In the light of the GoM spill, it’s obviously highly ‘relevant’ to their business yet there is no explanation for why BP chose not to report this indicator. Nor is it clear why an external assurer would not pick this up and question it – after all isn’t that part of the value proposition of external assurance?
The point of the GRI index is to surface this kind of information to help create the transparency that engenders trust. If users of the GRI index ignore relevant and material indicators then it kinda defeats the purpose. Note that the GRI doesn’t ‘police’ the use of its index – responsibility is with the reporter. Should we expect every GRI reporter to report why they did not report every possible GRI indicator? No. Only those that are relevant and material – like MM12.
This is not a criticism of BP, Ernst & Young or the GRI. I think BP does a pretty good job of putting a lot of useful reporting online (see its sustainability mapping tool for example), Ernst & Young presumably knows a thing or two about auditing and assurance and I have the greatest respect for the GRI’s comprehensive indicator sets and their ability to gain global engagement with them.
I’m just trying to highlight that for reporting to work you have to report. Otherwise it’s just a cosmetic exercise. It’s not just greenwash, it’s hogwash.
For me, the fact that someone chose to report using the GRI index and ignore indicator MM12 – or worse still didn’t even know it existed – represents another little chip in the rock of trust and doesn’t feel to be in the spirit of intentional transparency.
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