Alliance for Corporate Responsibility Reports Huge Gap Between Sustainability Policy Statements And Actual Action Taken
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Brussels : February 2020 : Research by The Alliance for Corporate Transparency finds that too many companies espouse the Paris Accord or the Sustainable Development Goals, but still fail to set specific targets in line with them, and measure their progress accordingly.
Of those who set climate targets, only 14 percent align to Paris goals, for example.
Most of all, given the high level of business debate around the Sustainable Development Goals, it is remarkable that with exception of Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, and Sweden, only a minority of companies made any reference to the SDGs in their reports across the rest of the European Union.
Former member the United Kingdom came second lowest among the ‘old’ Member States, at only 34 percent of their companies doing so
The report goes on to say that On climate change, 82 percent of companies have policies, but only 35 percent have targets and even fewer - 28 percent - report on their outcome.
The report’s results show the marked gap between what companies say about climate change and support for the TCFD, and what they actually do.
In addition to most companies’ failure to report on targets on climate change, even in the energy sector where climate-related reporting is understandably farthest advanced, the vast majority of companies fail to have specific risk mitigation strategies.
Overall, less than 32 percent of all companies report on such a strategy, while only 23% address specific climate risks.
Risks and metrics reporting are both intrinsic to the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures recommendations, and The Alliance for Corporate Transparency report, produced in accordance with the EU Non-Financial Reporting Directive, went on to conclude that it provided further evidence that it is right for the European Commission to begin the process of revising the disclosure legislation now.
The problem of a failure to address concrete issues, targets and principal risks, remains largely unchanged between both research cycles and needs to be urgently addressed.