Recently, The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), along with the consulting firm KPMG, released, "Reporting the Business Implications of Climate Change in Sustainability Reports". The report provides the results of a survey based on sustainability reports of 50 international companies that were published in 2006. The results of the survey found the following interesting information:

1. almost all of the 50 companies included climate change issues in their sustainability reports

2. most companies focused on potential opportunities with climate change as opposed to financial risks.

This was surprising to us at Change as the survey clearly reported that recent evidence clearly shows that "climate change presents serious global economic risks if measures are not taken". However, companies were more interested in focusing on the opportunties that climate change can bring - opportunities in the area of emissions trading and carbon credits. Why the focus? One SRI fund executive was reported to say that companies prefer to think of climate change (hurricanes, droughts) as extraordinary events and therefore not account for the financial risk however if their were to treat climate change as causing these disruptions then the financial impact on the company could be significant.

This trend shows us that its time for companies to provide Sustainability Reports that clearly included the REAL financial risks if a company does not act. It appears that companies are accepting the reality of climate change but are focusing only on the "up side" of climate change rather then the cost it will have to the business if it does not CHANGE. 

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