Event - The Future of Sustainability Reporting 2013

This event will take place on 6th of September 2013, 10.00 to 18.00, at the Conference Center of the Heinrich-Böll-Foundation, Schumannstrasse 8, 10117 Berlin. It will be in German with simultaneous translation of the plenary parts English-German and German-English. It is being presented by BSD and the Heinrich Böll Foundation. This is one of the most important events on sustainability and integrated reporting since GRI's launch of G4 in May and a few months before IIRC's framework launch in December.

This symposium will offer a critical reflection of the status quo of the ongoing development of Sustainability Reporting in the European and international context. It will include exciting panel discussions and workshops which will include Barbara Unmüßig (Heinrich Böll Foundation), Dr. Günther Bachmann (German Council for Sustainable Development), Jana Gebauer (IÖW) Marcello Palazzi (B Lab Europe), senior representatives from GRI, IIRC, SASB and GISR, the CEO's of Truecost, True Price Foundation and Ex'tax, as well as corporate representatives of Puma, EnBW, SAP, Thyssen Krupp, Flughafen München, WeSustain, Deloitte.

Sustainability Reporting is experiencing an exciting year in 2013. In April, the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) has released the Draft Framework for Integrated Reporting with the objective to launch Version 1 of the Framework by end of the year. At the end of May the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) has released GRI G4. Furthermore, the developments around the sector-specific indicator family of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) and the development process of the principles and indicators of the Global Initiative for Sustainability Ratings (GISR) are relevant to the development of sustainability reporting.

Besides these short- and mid-term developments from the perspective of standard setting, political framing, best practices from corporates, and new initiatives around the internalization of external costs into ‘true pricing’ as well as the needed and aligned change of taxation systems towards a ‘sustainable’ economic model are of growing interest and importance. How will sustainability reports and integrated reports react to these new themes or possibly even support their further development?

Other questions that will be addressed:

How should a company position itself in this variety of different developments?
Which activities are meaningful now, which ones maybe next year?
Which initiatives and standards will be accepted by the market players?
What will the EU and its member states ask from companies in the future?
How will stock exchanges move forward in requiring sustainability reporting information and how will the financial markets react to this new wave of players?
Has sustainability reporting evolved substantially over the years?
Do companies report what is really important, or should we rethink sustainability reporting, looking at the increasingly obvious problems deriving form climate change, water scarcity, biodiversity, labor and human rights as well as corruption issues? What do we really learn from sustainability and integrated reports so far?
Is integrated reporting paving the way to integrated thinking?
What effect will new initiatives around true costing, true pricing and true taxation have on sustainability and integrated reporting?