The Global Reporting Initiative, the organization that develops the most widely used sustainability reporting framework in the world, released an updated version of the guidelines May 22.

The G4 guidelines provide an outline for organizations to report on environmental, social, and governance data, such as greenhouse gas emissions, water use, and employee diversity.

The newest version encourages organizations to report only on information that is material to their business. The guidelines encourage organizations to state why a certain disclosure, such as greenhouse gas emissions, is material to the organization. The previous version of the guidelines assumed the responsibility of identifying which issues are relevant and material to most organizations.

"This means organizations and report users can concentrate on the sustainability impacts that matter, resulting in reports that are more strategic, more focused, more credible, and easier for stakeholders to navigate," the Global Reporting Initiative said in a statement.

Steve Rylance, a spokesman for GRI, told BNA May 23 that G4 increases the focus on material topics. "[W]hile in G3 the materiality focus was present, in G4 it underpins the whole of the guidelines to the extent that it promotes a new way of thinking about sustainability reporting," Rylance said in an email statement.

Guidance Contains New Disclosures

The G4 guidelines also recommend new or updated items for disclosure in the areas of governance, supply chain, greenhouse gas emissions, and other issues.

New disclosure items include:

• energy intensity of the organization or unit of energy used per unit of product or service provided,

• greenhouse gas emissions intensity, including the extent of emissions considered and type of gas included,

• percentage of new suppliers screened using environmental criteria,

• significant actual and potential negative environmental impacts in the supply chain, and

• whether the organization's board has oversight of sustainability-related issues.

G4 also does away with the application levels A, B, and C through which, under the previous guidelines, organizations self-declared the degree to which they applied the guidelines. Critics said the application levels misled readers to believe they indicate the quality of a sustainability report.

Two-Tiered System Used

The application levels have been replaced by a two-tiered system for expressing the degree to which an organization complies with the guidelines.

Organizations again will self-declare whether they prepared a "core" or "comprehensive" report. Core reports must include the standard disclosures for all material issues and at least one relevant indicator per material issue. Comprehensive reports must include all standard disclosures and all indicators for each material issue.

The G4 guidelines were developed over a two-year period that included two public consultation periods and involved 120 contributors, according to GRI. The last version of the guidelines was released in 2006 and updated in 2011.

Organizations will be able to use the third version of GRI guidelines until May 22, 2015, Rylance said.

The G4 guidelines are available at: http://bit.ly/16NDmkj.