ACCA has been actively involved with the unfolding debate on corporate social and environmental responsibility since 1990. We promote transparency and best practice. We aim to help businesses and organisations realise the growing importance of sustainability to them, and we have launched a number of high profile initiatives.
ACCA Pakistan and WWF Pakistan teamed up in 2002 to take this challenging initiative forward in Pakistan, by launching the Pakistan Environmental Reporting Awards (PERA). WWF Pakistan are ideal partners for us, they have a long and credible record on conservation through partnerships with communities and organisations.
Both of our organisations saw PERA as "thought leadership," the idea of organisations being transparent and accountable for their environmental actions was alien to them.
ACCA Awards around the world reward companies for excellence in environmental, social and sustainability reporting. The aim of PERA is to identify and reward innovative attempts to communicate corporate environmental performance, although we do not comment on performance itself. Our aim is to reward transparency.
At the core of the judging criteria are completeness, credibility and communication. Our Award winners demonstrate that, by emphasising these key elements, companies can target significant improvements in the quality of information disclosed during the reporting process.
Ultimately, ACCA-WWF Awards help underline the business case for sustainable practices and development.
We realised from day one that our role was not only one of introducing the award scheme but we would also have to show organisations how to prepare environmental reports. There are a number of reporting methodologies, but luckily both ACCA and WWF Pakistan support the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI).
GRI was established in late 1997 with the mission of developing globally applicable guidelines for reporting on the economic, environmental, and social performance of corporations, governments, and non-governmental organisations (NGO).
The GRI incorporates the active participation of corporations, NGOs, accountancy organisations, business associations, and other stakeholders from around the world. The Guidelines represent the first global framework for comprehensive sustainability reporting, encompassing the "triple bottom line" of economic, environmental, and social issues.
Environmental Reporting can be defined as "the process of communicating externally the environmental effects of an organisation's economic actions through the corporate annual report or a separate stand-alone publicly available environmental report".
This form of reporting encompasses, inter alia, disclosures relating to environmental policies, impacts, processes and audits. It can also include environmental-related expenditures, the environmental benefits of products, and details regarding sustainable operations.
While certain sectors may have more to gain by reporting on their environmental impacts, generally such reporting can benefit all businesses and in many instances may alleviate some of the concerns of the wider society.
LISTED BELOW ARE SOME MOTIVATIONS WHY COMPANIES ENGAGE IN ENVIRONMENTAL REPORTING:
1. Risk management - in areas of financial, legal and reputation implications.
2. Marketing strategy - public image, brand enhancement such as through receiving environmental awards.
3. Legal needs - to keep in pace with/anticipate regulations.
4. Competition - to get ahead of/stay with competitors.
5. Ethics - individual commitment; commitment to accountability and transparency.
6. Accounting requirements - in compliance with financial reporting requirements and provide link between financial and environmental performance /reporting.
7. Investors' interests - demands of Green (ethical) investors.
8. Employees' interests - attracts right staff from the labour market.
9. Value-add reporting - to add value to corporate reports and communicate to wider range to stakeholders, addressing their environmental concerns.
10. Certification needs - to indicate compliance with ISO14000 and other environmental regulatory guidelines.
The driving force behind the success of the PERA are the organisations that have voluntarily decided to take up the challenge by publishing environmental reports and entering them for the Awards and the very enthusiastic independent panel of judges who review all the entries, shortlist them and finally undertake the very difficult job of selecting the overall winning reports.
The judges are all volunteers and both ACCA and WWF Pakistan are honoured to have them on board; they are Dr Parvez Hassan, Ali Tauqeer Sheikh, Ambreen Waheed, Jaweria Ather, Dawood Ghaznavi and Farhan Sami.