Balanced Materiality: A Practical Approach to Determining Sustainability Priorities

摘要

Materiality is a fundamental principle in sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR) to determine those issues that are significant enough to companies, investors and other stakeholders to warrant investment, management and disclosure. Exploration and Production (E&P) companies are at various stages of development in the application of materiality tools to support non-financial reporting. This paper describes background on this developing area of practice and a practical approach to materiality taken by one company in the E&P sector. Specifically, we provide first-hand knowledge and guidance for developing a materiality process that adheres to company risk assessment principles, investor and community expectations, and company values and commitments. The approach also integrates mechanisms to incorporate external expert feedback and criteria from leading standards for disclosure such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) G4 Guidelines and the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) E&P sustainability accounting standard.