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W(h)ither Ecology? The Triple Bottom Line, the Global Reporting Initiative, and Corporate Sustainability Reporting

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Abstract

This paper offers a critique of sustainability reporting and, in particular, a critique of the modern disconnect between the practice of sustainability reporting and what we consider to be the urgent issue of our era: sustaining the life-supporting ecological systems on which humanity and other species depend. Tracing the history of such reporting developments, we identify and isolate the concept of the ‘triple bottom line’ (TBL) as a core and dominant idea that continues to pervade business reporting, and business engagement with sustainability. Incorporating an entity’s economic, environmental and social performance indicators into its management and reporting processes, we argue, has become synonymous with corporate sustainability; in the process, concern for ecology has become sidelined. Moreover, this process has become reinforced and institutionalised through SustainAbility’s biennial benchmarking reports, KPMG’s triennial surveys of practice, initiatives by the accountancy profession and, particularly, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)’s sustainability reporting guidelines. We argue that the TBL and the GRI are insufficient conditions for organizations contributing to the sustaining of the Earth’s ecology. Paradoxically, they may reinforce business-as-usual and greater levels of un-sustainability.

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Notes

  1. The triple bottom line is also sometimes referred to as ‘3BL’ (see, for example, Norman and MacDonald 2004). We are unaware of any importance in this difference in acronyms.

  2. GEO-5 was released July 2012. http://www.unep.org/geo/pdfs/geo5/GEO5_report_full_en.pdf. Accessed 10 Oct 2012.

  3. Thus continuing a 50 year stream of data and insight which includes Carson (1962), Boulding (1966), Ehrlich (1968), Hardin (1968), Georgescu-Rogen (1971), Commoner (1972), Meadows et al. (1972), Goldsmith The Ecologist (1972), Ward and Dubos (1972), Daly (1973), and Schumacher (1973).

  4. With respect to the laws of nature, Russell (1986, pp. 35–36) asks “Have we any reason, assuming they have always held in the past, to suppose that they will hold in the future?” His response is instructive. “It has been argued that we have reason to know that the future will resemble the past, because what was the future has constantly become the past, and has always been found to resemble the past, so that we really have experience of the future, namely of times which were formerly future, which we may call past futures. But such an argument really begs the very question at issue. We have experience of past futures, but not future futures, and the question is: Will future futures resemble past futures? This question is not to be answered by an argument which starts from past futures alone.” In fact, this question cannot be answered by reason or experience. It cannot be answered by observation because we cannot observe the future, and it cannot be answered logically because we cannot deductively move from a first premise that A and B have always been observed together to the conclusion that A and B have always been, are always, and always will be, observed together. As Russell (1986, p. 38, emphasis in original) concludes, “Thus our inductive principle [of generalising from past events to future ones] is at any rate not capable of being disproved by an appeal to experience. The inductive principle, however, is equally incapable of being proved by an appeal to experience.”

  5. Odum (1982) and Ornstein and Ehrlich (1989), for example, have argued that the current crises we face are in part the result of creeping incrementalism and our reductionist tendencies to focus on individual short-term events and decisions, and to ignore the long-term and cumulative effects of our behaviour.

  6. We ignore here the challenge that any such framing is almost certainly modernist, with masculine bias and risks drifting into anthropocentrism (Zimmerman 1994).

  7. Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It contains within it two key concepts: the concept of ‘needs’, in particular the essential needs of the world’s poor, to which overriding priority should be given; and the idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organization on the environment’s ability to meet present and future needs (WCED 1987, p. 43).

  8. For more detail see, for example, Milne and Gray (2007), Patten (1991), Hackston and Milne (1996), Gray et al. (1995), Kolk (1999, 2003, 2008), Morhardt (2010).

  9. Although this nomenclature only remained for one edition—this fluency of nomenclature in the KPMG survey may well be seen, itself, as indicative of a struggle over language.

  10. For more on the trends in reporting see, for example, Kolk (2003, 2008), KPMG/UNEP/GRI/UCGA (2010), Milne et al. (2001, 2003), Chapman and Milne (2004), Pleon (2005), Pallenberg et al. (2006), KPMG (2008), Morhardt (2010).

  11. A similar inference can be drawn from the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) Reporting Awards Scheme, later the Sustainability Reporting Awards (ACCA 2001 et seq.).

  12. http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/documents/WSSD_POI_PD/English/WSSD_PlanImpl.pdf. Accessed 24 June 2011.

  13. And which, elsewhere, attracts substantive criticism, (see, for example, Norman and MacDonald 2004; Dumay et al. 2010).

  14. The Global 100 companies deserve to be recognized, because they are models for the art of the possible, living proof of how billion dollar entities can squeeze more wealth from less material resources while honouring the social contract. See http://www.global100.org/annual-reviews/2011-global-100-list.html?sort=rank. Accessed 30 Aug 2012.

  15. http://www.sustainability-index.com/07_htmle/indexes/djsiworld_supersectorleaders_10_1.html. Accessed 30 Aug 2012.

  16. http://ro.sodexo.com/roro/Images/BITC_2007_tcm110-419821.pdf. Accessed 30 Aug 2012.

  17. https://www.cdproject.net/en-US/Results/pages/leadership-index.aspx. Accessed 30 Aug 2012.

  18. http://www.accaglobal.com/usa/general/sustainability/. Accessed 25 April 2010.

  19. This statement is derived from a personal conversation between John Elkington and one of the authors.

  20. In this context, we note that the primary driver of the oil company BP acknowledging climate change was employee pressure; around half of BP staff have postgraduate science-based qualifications.

  21. The Best Foot Forward’s (BFF undated) analysis of the Isle of Wight’s (UK) footprint, for example, estimates each islander consumes about 2.5 times the sustainable average Earthshare. It presents a detailed analysis of the ‘supply-consumption-disposal’ chain on the Island, and begins to bring an understanding of the collective impacts of the islanders’ and their tourist visitors’ material consumption, as well indicating some (albeit short-term and incrementalist) alternatives. BFF have also calculated the footprint of Radiohead’s tours BFF (2007).

  22. For more detail see the Factor-10 Club, www.factor10-institute.org. Accessed 25 April 2009.

  23. http://www.p3italy.it/?id_pagina=7&id_categoria=3&id_news=40&Lang=_2. Accessed 30 Aug 2012.

  24. Under the entirely incorrect claim to be the first to try to produce an environmental P&L! http://www.environmentalleader.com/2011/05/16/puma-reveals-worlds-first-environmental-pl-results/. Accessed 30 Aug 2012.

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Acknowledgments

The authors especially wish to thank the reviewers on a previous version of this paper for their helpful and constructive comments and our thanks to Dave Owen and Amanda Ball for comments and contributions on an earlier draft. We are also indebted to participants from the following conferences where early versions of this paper appeared: International Sustainability Conference, Basel, Switzerland, 2005; Critical Perspectives on Accounting Conference, New York, 2008; American Accounting Association Conference, Anaheim, 2008; Critical Management Studies Workshop, University of Southern California, 2008.

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  1. College of Business and Economics, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

    Markus J. Milne

  2. School of Management, University of St Andrews, St. Andrews, UK

    Rob Gray

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Milne, M.J., Gray, R. W(h)ither Ecology? The Triple Bottom Line, the Global Reporting Initiative, and Corporate Sustainability Reporting. J Bus Ethics 118, 13–29 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-012-1543-8

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