Providing Assurance on Sustainability Reports
The paper addresses the recent trend towards providing assurance on sustainability reports, i.e. reports that deal not only with environmental performance, but also the social and economic (not only financial) impacts of business.
The publication aims to stimulate debate on an element that is key to the wide scale acceptance of sustainability reporting, namely third party, independent assurance provision. Such assurance provision enhances the quality and credibility of company reporting. The paper asks whether sustainability reporting is now mature enough to withstand the highest levels of such scrutiny.
The paper notes that achieving generally accepted, high quality reporting requires an inclusive approach. Therefore, FEE encourages multi-stakeholder dialogue on the issues raised in this paper. Feedback on the question raised is requested by no later than November 1st, 2002.