Sustainability Context

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= "a performance accounting principle that calls for the specification of organization-specific standards of performance as a precursor to measurement and reporting".

URL = http://www.sustycontext.org/about/

Description

1.

"In a nutshell, Sustainability Context calls for assessing "the performance of the organization in the context of the limits and demands placed on environmental or social resources at the sectoral, local, regional, or global level," to quote the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), which coined the concept as one of its core Principles in 2002. Or, as GRI Co-Founder (and SustyContextGroup member) Allen White says, “Sustainability requires contextualization within thresholds. That’s what sustainability is all about.” In other words, what's the micro-macro link? Are a company's micro-level social and environmental impacts sustainable at the macro social and ecological levels?

The problem is, most so-called corporate sustainability programs focus just on the micro level, advancing incremental improvements in company social and environmental performance, as compared to past years or to peers – but not as compared to limits and thresholds in the broader social and environmental levels. Put bluntly, corporate sustainability as currently practiced lacks context – and therefore is destined to fall short of solving our sustainability challenges. It is precisely because of the absence of context at the micro level in most organizations that the impacts of commerce at the macro level is so often unsustainable." (http://www.sustycontext.org/blog/2014/1/28/sustainability-context-group-website-goes-live)


2. Bill Baue et al:

"Building on the definition of the Sustainability Context principle first put forward by GRI in 2002, we (the SustyContextGroup) have expanded the idea as follows:

Sustainability Context (SC) is a performance accounting principle that calls for the specification of organization-specific standards of performance as a precursor to measurement and reporting.


According to the principle, SC must take into account

(1) whom an organization’s stakeholders are,

(2) the duties and obligations it owes to them to manage its impacts on vital capitals in ways that can affect their well-being,

(3) the carrying capacities of the capitals involved, and

(4) its fair, just and proportionate shares of the carrying capacities and/or burdens to maintain them.


Not only is this a backwards-compatible version of the concept relative to the GRI definition, it is also one that we believe is more fully evolved and executable in practice." (http://www.sustycontext.org/about/)

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