2014 CSE Research on Sustainability Reporting
The Centre for Sustainability and Excellence (CSE) as an official GRI Training Partner for Middle East recently conducted a research to observe the emerging trends for the publication of Sustainability (CSR) Reports and external assurance in Gulf Countries and overall Middle East region.
To examine the statistical results, CSE processed data retrieved from the international database of GRI (Global Reporting Initiative) and conducted a survey of 67 organizations in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and Egypt that have published unique Sustainability reports for the period 2012-2014
The results showed that companies in the energy sector have the lead with a rate of 28% among companies that produce a sustainability report. The country that published most sustainability reports in the period 2012-2014 was United Arab Emirates with 34% followed by Qatar where 22% of the reports were issued.
The main conclusion of this research was that almost 81% of companies in Middle East that published a Sustainability (CSR) report, followed the internationally recognized standards of GRI, while the remaining 19% was based either on ten basic principles of United Nations Global Compact or did not comply with any particular or recognized reporting standard. Despite that the majority of the companies follow the instructions GRI G3.1 to their sustainability reports, only a small percentage of the reports fully comply with the GRI requirements. Furthermore, only 19% of the sustainability reports sample contained external assurance. Additionally, less than 10% of the companies studied have established future goals or launched strategy on sustainability and CSR issues.
According to those conclusions it seems that while Sustainability Reporting is booming in particular countries in Gulf (e.g. UAE, Qatar) there is still lack of maturity for the importance of strategy and external assurance according to global best practices.
CSE encourages every company who would like to better understand the significance of those strategies and earn all the practical tools to create Sustainability Reports , to join our
Global Advanced Certified Sustainability Course and GRI G4 Courses:
Abu Dhabi, UAE on October 12-13
Dubai, UAE on December 7-8
For more information contact us at [email protected] or visit www.cse-net.org (Upcoming Trainings)