Global Reporting Initiative

GRI

Founded	1997 Boston, United States
Type	Non-governmental organization
Purpose	Sustainability reporting
Headquarters	Amsterdam, Netherlands
Region served	Worldwide
Chief Executive	Tim Mohin
Deputy Chief Executive	Teresa Fogelberg
Chief Financial Officer	Peter Westra
Main organ	Secretariat (administrative office) elected by the Annual General Meeting
Affiliations	OECD, UNEP, United Nations Global Compact, ISO
Website	https://www.globalreporting.org
Formerly called	Global Reporting Initiative

The Global Reporting Initiative (known as GRI) is an international independent standards organization that helps businesses, governments and other organizations understand and communicate their impacts on issues such as climate change, human rights and corruption. As of 2015, 7,500 organizations used GRI Guidelines for the sustainability reports. GRI Guidelines apply to multinational organizations, public agencies, smaller and medium enterprises, NGOs, industry groups and others. For municipal governments, they have generally been subsumed by similar guidelines from the UN ICLEI.

The GRI is an example of an organization that acts outside of the top-down power command structures associated with government (e.g., quasi-autonomous bodies and regulators). Environmental governance is the multifaceted and multilayered nature of "governing" the borderless and state-indiscriminate natural environment. Unlike major protected policy areas such as finance or defence, the environment requires sovereign states to sign up to treaties and multilateral agreements in order to coordinate action. Sustainability reporting is a more recent concept that encourages businesses and institutions to report on their environmental performance.

The GRI was formed by the United States-based non-profits Ceres (formerly the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies) and Tellus Institute, with the support of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in 1997. It released an “exposure draft” version of the Sustainability Reporting Guidelines in 1999, the first full version in 2000, the second version was released at the World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg — where the organization and the Guidelines were also referred to in the Plan of Implementation signed by all attending member states. Later that year it became a permanent institution, with its Secretariat in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Although the GRI is independent, it remains a collaborating centre of UNEP and works in cooperation with the United Nations Global Compact.

A member of the board of the Dutch National Contact Point (NCP) of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises. Herman Mulder was appointed as a Chairman of the GRI in 2011. In the past Mr Mulder was a senior executive vice-president at ABN AMRO, and is now a chairman of the True Price.