Abstract

This paper aims to produce an original model distilling a conceptual framework for sustainability disclosure. We first identify the institutional foundations and the mission of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), implicitly discussing the foundation of constructive reporting. Two levels of information reliability are then described, derived mainly from accounting conceptual frameworks, and the GRI Guidelines. We follow an inductive approach: we analyze the qualitative characteristics of several specific environmental indicators, in order to assess the degree of relevance and reliability of each particular provision. We will finally make an attempt to derive the objective of sustainability reporting, while assessing the degree of usefulness of this type of documents that closely follow the more formalized process of financial reporting. We conclude that there is a multitude of reasons for not reporting, and the majority of these are related to internal data reliability. Hence, stakeholders cannot distinguish between different types of data unreliability; and the GRI Guidelines do little on this matter.