ACCA aims to help businesses and organisations realise the growing importance of sustainability to them. The following are essential sources of guidance on reporting.
This series of documents, published by The Institute of Social and Ethical Accountability (or AccountAbility) act as principles based standards designed to help corporations trying to implement systems and processes for improving their sustainability performance and accountability. Within the AA1000 series, there is a stakeholder engagement standard and assurance standard as well as the accountability guidance. See the AccountAbility website for more information.
The Global Reporting Initiative in 2002 published a reporting framework which is made up of reporting guidelines, sector supplements and protocols. The guidelines should be used as the basis for corporate reporting. In October 2006, an updated version of this framework was launched in Amsterdam, introducing two new sections (which override the previous ones) entitled "reporting guidance and principles" and "standard disclosures". These are designed to help companies to decide what material issues are most important for their company and how performance against these issues is best disclosed. For more information, go to the GRI website
Following the announcement in 2005 that the OFR was no longer going to be forced, DEFRA, in collaboration with Trucost, published a new set of environmental reporting guidelines, designed to help businesses address their most significant environmental impacts and report on them in a way that meets the needs of current regulation, such as the EU Accounts Modernisation Directive (AMD). For more information, visit the DEFRA website