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Alaya Developing GRI-certified ESG Talents for 7 years

susie March 11, 2023 0 Comments

Alaya Consulting, the first pure-play ESG consultancy in Hong Kong, has partnered with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) for the 7th consecutive year for providing certified sustainability training to target audiences in Asia-Pacific. Alaya is the only GRI training organisation that offers online training in Chinese on a self-paced mode, allowing participants the freedom of learning sustainability reporting essentials anywhere and anytime.

 GRI, an independent international organisation, has set GRI Standards which provide organisations with guidelines and indicators needed to report their environmental, social, and governance impacts, ensuring a base for comparability and global standardisation.

 In light of stakeholders’ pressure for more transparent and sustainable business practices, ESG reporting is evolving rapidly with more comprehensive frameworks released every now and then. Two new standards launched by the International Sustainability Standard Boards (ISSB), the Climate-related Disclosures and the General Sustainability-related Disclosures, are meant to standardise ESG reports globally. While the first one focuses on an organisation’s greenhouse gas emissions, climate scenarios, and climate-related financial impacts, the latter covers overall requirements for an entity to disclose sustainability-related financial information about its sustainability-related risks and opportunities.

 One common ground for all these frameworks is the way they complement the GRI Standards. A study commissioned by the European Commission has found that companies using GRI reporting are best prepared for the new EU Non-Financial Reporting Directive (NFRD) standards. According to the study, companies using the GRI framework performed better than those using other frameworks in several areas, including the quality of disclosures, the level of details provided, and the completeness of the reporting. The study also found that companies using the GRI framework were more likely to report on a wider range of sustainability issues and to provide more comprehensive information on risks and opportunities related to ESG.

 The GRI is widely recognized as a leading sustainability reporting framework, and many organisations already use it as a basis for sustainability reporting. The introduction of the new ISSB standards and NFRD is a positive step towards improving the quality and consistency of sustainability reporting, and their alignment with GRI should help to promote greater transparency and accountability on ESG issues.

To help professionals equip themselves with the proper knowledge to navigate the future reporting landscape, Alaya is hosting a training session in our GRI Professional Certification Programme on May 6th and 13th (9AM – 6PM). For application enquiries, please contact us at gritraining@alayaconsulting.com.hk. Looking forward to seeing your faces at our training!