Is mandatory corporate sustainability reporting in the future for public companies? Not necessarily. If companies continue to voluntarily report on their sustainability and corporate responsibility efforts, mandatory reporting, at least in the United States, may not come to pass anytime soon.
That doesn’t mean there won’t be attempts to make it happen. For example, the Sustainable Stock Exchanges Initiative recently made an attempt at expanding mandatory reporting at the United Nations sponsored Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development in June. The initiative was introduced to encourage improved transparency and reporting on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) initiatives. NASDAQ OMX announced it was joining exchanges in Sao Paulo, Johannesburg, Istanbul, and Cairo to encourage listed companies to report on ESG results.
