Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Taken together, these approaches - sustainability, reporting, and
BSTEs - advance social learning about the agricultural GMO tech-
nology.
The Role for Sustainability Reporting
During the past decade, the ideas of transparency and accountability in
environmental and sustainability performance have taken root in the
discourse on corporate social responsibility.
47
Voluntary sustainability
reporting has emerged as part of this trend and has rapidly diffused
among large global corporations.
48
By 2002, the Global Reporting Ini-
tiative (GRI) has rapidly become the leader among voluntary worldwide
performance reporting programs on corporate responsibility and a gold
standard by which sustainability reporting is judged.
GRI introduced three key institutional innovations: (1) creating the
guidelines through collaborative efforts of a wide range of actors, who
had not previously thought of themselves as members of the same polit-
ical or policy networks, in a maximally transparent Internet-based man-
ner; (2) putting in place a self-replicating, inclusive, multi-stakeholder
international network of organizations and individuals for producing suc-
cessive generations of the guidelines, which assures their adaptability and
long-term survival; (3) creating an organization that serves as the stew-
ard of the guidelines and the process by which they will evolve. GRI's
meteoric rise on the global scene - in scope, visibility, name recognition,
and prestige - speaks to the broad acceptance of these ideas. For that
reason, and because of some of GRI's unique features, we use GRI as
47
See Wolfgang H. Reinicke & Francis Deng,
Critical Choices: The United Nations,
Networks, and the Future of Global Governance
, (International Development Center
2000); See also
World Bank, Greening Industry: New Roles for Communities, Markets,
and Government
(Oxford University Press 2000).
48
See A. L. White, Sustainability and the Accountable Corporation. 41
Environment
3-43 (1999). See also Corporate Storytelling: Non-financial Accounting is Now Too
Serious to be Left to Amateurs,
The Economist
Nov. 6-12, 2004, 13-14.
