W(h)ither Ecology? The Triple Bottom Line, The Global Reporting Initiative, and Corporate Sustainability Reporting

摘要

The paper argues that sustainability reporting with its use of Triple Bottom Line (TBL), Global Reporting Initiative and the emerging Integrated Reporting protocol is not fit for purpose; because the reports, through their use of such protocols, are not tackling the urgent issue of our time - 'sustaining the life-supporting ecological systems on which humanity and other species depend' (p. 13). They argue the 'one thing you cannot learn from a sustainability report is the contribution to/detraction from sustainability that the organisation has made' (p. 17). Further because 'nature and ecology know nothing of our businesses and institutions, and will not reconfigure along our modern institutional lines' (p. 24), we must. Yet sustainability reporting does not tackle this issue of reconfiguration; rather it focuses purely on what has happened, but not how those happenings make our institutions and ultimately humanity follow a more or less sustainable path. Hence the title of their paper - 'W(h)ither Ecology?'