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GRI Business Breakfast with Paul Hohnen
20 January 2010
Trialogue was pleased to host Paul Hohnen, representing the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), at a breakfast at the Vineyard Hotel in Newlands, Cape Town. 30 people attended, including representatives from leading retailers, financial institutions and NGOs. Paul, who has more than 30 years in the field, many of those as Strategic Director of the GRI, offered insights and anecdotes from his experience. His talk highlighted the accelerating global uptake of and commitment to sustainability principles, despite (and, in some cases, because of) the global recession.
Paul spoke about the importance of managing resources, energy and waste in order to save the planet from a collapse of natural capital, with its knock-on effect on our human economy. Many wild commercial fish stocks, for example, are likely to collapse within 10 to 15 years. The GRI is effectively the corporate response to this challenge, facilitated by the GRI organisation through an iterative stakeholder engagement process stretching back to the 1990s, and still ongoing. It is now the pre-eminent standard for sustainability reporting, and has strong links with other initiatives such as the Global Compact and the ISO series. In essence, Paul explained, GRI reporting encourages organisations to consider and measure their impact on the planet. It provides a framework for identifying and responding to material sustainability issues, and for explaining to stakeholders the organisation's progress or non-compliance.
Paul offered a variety of examples and anecdotes which stimulated lively discussion among the participants. In particular, South African asset managers present were asked whether current sustainability trends were of sufficient note to shareholders to warrant their beginning to probe companies around sustainability issues. It was generally felt that most investors, currently pre-occupied with marketplace concerns related to the global financial crisis, still need to understand the strategic value of sustainability issues on the long-term profitability of a company.
Paul introduced the GRI Organisational Stakeholders programme, and elaborated on what it can offer the industry. He concluded by talking about the business opportunities being presented by the growing green industry, now apparently by some measures larger even than the aeronautical and defense industries combined. Rob Worthington-Smith, director of Trialogue, thanked the speaker and challenged / encouraged the industry to strengthen the link between good practices and long-term business value.
From left: Heather de Wet (editor, The Environmental Handbook), Paul Hohnen, Rob Worthington-Smith (director, Trialogue), Vanessa Rockey (director, Trialogue)
