Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
GRI has contributed to the operationalization of the abstract concept
of social impacts (within the sustainability framework), demonstrated
that communicating social performance in a systematic and compara-
ble way is in fact possible, and showed that broadly based consensus
can be reached on how to do it;
GRI illustrates how a very broad multi-stakeholder process can serve
to build consensus on a difficult and possibly divisive issue such as
sustainability indicators;
GRI has legitimated the idea of sustainability reporting and created
an expectation that such a report will be comprehensive, responsive
to its stakeholders, verifiable, and based on mutual engagement with
the key stakeholders;
The concept of a multi-stakeholder process has been adopted by
other visible global institutions. For example, the International Stan-
dards Organization is using this process to develop its new sustain-
ability reporting standard, ISO 26,000.
Although the GRI Guidelines do not seek to establish norms of
behavior, the process they set in motion is likely to contribute over
time to a societal consensus on what constitutes the proper use of a
technology and fair treatment of interested parties. Most importantly,
the relatively unthreatening process of developing reporting guidelines
brings together societal actors, who would not otherwise engage with one
another if the topic focused on actual performance or other divisive top-
ics. The experience of creating the GRI Supplement for the Mining and
Metal Processing Sector, briefly described in the Appendix, illustrates
this signature GRI phenomenon of discourse creation and consensus
making.
For application of this process to the GMO problem, the GRI organi-
zation would embark on producing a “Sector Supplement” for the agri-
cultural GMO industry. This would automatically create a platform, the
language and framing for a discourse, and a widely ranging constituency.
