Many stakeholders have asked where and how GRI will be evolving in the coming years. This session will offer Organizational Stakeholders (OS) an opportunity to hear directly from official spokespeople about GRI’s future strategy. Professor Mervyn King will share his wide experience of sustainability reporting. Karin Ireton will talk about the vital contribution of OS to furthering the sustainability reporting agenda. At the core of the meeting is a panel discussion featuring Mervyn King, Karin Ireton and Ernst Ligteringen, taking direct questions from OS.

2010 is a critical year to take stock and take action. While enormous progress has been made on many fronts over the past decade, it’s clear that the current economic model is deeply unsustainable. Time is running out to find effective answers for challenges such as poverty alleviation, climate change, biodiversity loss and the other issues identified in the UN Millennium Development Goals. Most experts consider that the next decade will be crucial to the fate of humankind.

Against this backdrop, the 3rd Amsterdam Global Conference has set itself the challenge of crafting an action agenda for the period up to 2020. How can we tackle the triple challenges of ‘finance, fuel and food’? How can the power of information help markets and societies find ways to become sustainable? How can claims regarding ‘green growth’ and ‘green industry’ best be assessed?

This session will provide an informal platform for the GRI Training Partners, Quality Control Consultants of the GRI Certified Training Program and anyone who has attended a GRI Certified Training Course to come together with the GRI Learning Services staff. Participants will have the opportunity to mix and network in a more social atmosphere and exchange experiences on the GRI Certified Training Programs in an informal way.

GRI’s Organizational Stakeholder (OS) Program has grown to include 584 organizations from over 50 countries. Our conference presents a rare opportunity to bring together OS from around the world. GRI’s founders Bob Massie and Allen White will welcome OS to an exclusive celebration at the RAI’s “beach.” OS can enjoy drinks and canapés whilst meeting like-minded organizations, the OS Team, and members of the GRI Secretariat and Stakeholder Council. The OS General Assembly panel, Professor Mervyn King, Ernst Ligteringen and Karin Ireton will be present, this time for more informal discussion.

Governments play a central role in setting the national and global framework for a sustainable economy. However not everything can or should be regulated. The art of government is to know how, where and when to intervene, using the full range of tools at its disposal.

Based on the recent hard lessons of the global financial crisis, Rethinking, this session will explore what lessons governments have drawn from the global financial crisis and what role governments see in Rebuilding the economy to ensure sustainability. While a growing number of companies Report and disclose ESG data, the majority of companies still limit disclosure to financial information. Uneven transparency affects markets and society alike, and could disadvantage more transparent organizations. How can government harness the power of markets to serve the common good? Is voluntary ESG reporting a driver towards a sustainable economy or a license for irresponsible conduct?

Small in size, but big in numbers, SMEs play an integral part in the process of creating a more sustainable world. It is a sector with unique issues and approaches towards sustainability reporting. This session will provide an opportunity for the audience to learn from the first hand experiences of SMEs who have taken the step to produce a GRI sustainability report and from those who helped them along the way.

The target group for the GRI Certified Software and Tools Program includes all types of organizations that are planning to fully or partly use the elements of the GRI Reporting Framework in their tools or software. This informative session will present the program and explain the applications process for interested parties.

The media play a central role in fostering transparency and accountability. But how transparent are media themselves? Learn from media and organizations and their stakeholders as they discuss how the media contribute to sustainable development through their unique role. And find out how these experts see this role evolving. Also hear how media organizations are taking steps to improve their own transparency, and how they are grappling with measuring and reporting on their unique media content related sustainability impacts.

This session will give insight into developments and peculiarities regarding sustainability reporting. Studies presented will cover trajectories of sustainability reporting by the largest multinationals worldwide, considering evolving patterns at the firm level in their sector-specific settings. Another study analyzes the evolution of reporting practices in Mexico over the years, comparing different generations of reporting. Attention will also be paid to the performance consequences, by relating the structure of sustainability reporting to corporate social performance.

Former Exxon Norway President Oystein Dahle is credited with having said: ‘Socialism collapsed because it did not allow the market to tell the economic truth; capitalism may collapse because it does not tell the ecological truth.’ Effective markets thrive on accurate, material and timely information. Information flows are shaped by government policies, investors’ and customers’ demands, and technological developments. Having seen how markets can fail to serve the common interest, Rethinking, this session explores how markets can be best informed to help Rebuild our economy and integrate environmental and social risks and value drivers. This session will explore the information needs of a sustainable economy, how sustainability Reporting should evolve, and whether or how the leading sustainability ratings and indexes can equip markets to mitigate risk and generate value. Will better ESG information help to change markets?

Four years ago the groundbreaking study “Carrots and Sticks for Starters” was released. Since then the global financial and economic crisis has sparked renewed focus on regulation, including corporate governance and disclosure requirements. As a response to this, governments have been increasingly engaged in mandating sustainability reporting and in issuing guidance documents. What are the regulatory trends in the different regions of the world? Come and witness the launch of the second global study by UNEP, GRI, KPMG, and University of Stellenbosch Business School.

What value does sustainability reporting bring to organizations in major emerging markets like Brazil, India, China, and South Africa? The answer to this question is key, enabling the mainstreaming of sustainability reporting in these emerging markets.

It is on everybody’s mind: how to use interactive technology (including social media) to get your sustainability message across? How can digital tools help you demonstrate accountability and optimize stakeholder engagement? The use of interactive technology is changing the traditional notions of transparency, power, and accountability between companies and their stakeholders. This session will provide an overview of how these technologies can be used by companies to communicate their sustainability message as well as deepen understanding and improve performance on accountability and stakeholder engagement.

Many NGOs publish financial and overall program reports, but it is less common to publish data on their works that impacts the environment and on the unintended consequences of their activities. The GRI NGO Sector Supplement was initiated by the INGO Accountability Charter and will be released at this session. It was created for NGOs to signal their commitment to strengthen their public accountability. This session will discuss different views on what NGOs should report and what the future will bring for reporting NGOs.

This session will discuss and evaluate, both theoretically and empirically, recent trends and developments in assurance statement practice. What are the best practices for building assurance in reporting for professional firms? The session will specifically consider the role assurance is playing in enhancing stakeholder accountability.

Not everyone knows that GRI publishes a number of relevant publications on sustainability reporting each year. These include both the GRI Learning Publications as well as publications in the GRI Research and Development series. In this lunch session the audience will find out about the different GRI publications and how to access them.

What can the UN Global Compact - GRI partnership offer your organization? The Global Compact pursues the alignment of values and operational principles for sustainable development. GRI offers organizations a trusted framework to communicate their sustainability performance. In a new decade with new needs, UNGC and GRI’s common vision of a sustainable economy will offer a platform for realizing the value of sustainable development: facilitating sustainable outcomes, material performance disclosure and ensuring that the information is accessible for today’s and tomorrow’s stakeholders.

The Certified Training Program aims to disseminate knowledge on sustainability reporting around the world. It has been developed especially to help report makers and users to more effectively use the GRI Framework and GRI reports. This session will give a summary overview of the program and the “Introduction to GRI Workshop”. It will clarify who offers each of these, where they are offered and how interested participants can apply to attend.

There is increasing recognition by business leaders and stakeholders that the business paradigm has ‘lost the plot’. Rethinking, business has unequaled potential to be part of the sustainability solution as well as a worrying capacity to do damage to nature and society. In the long term, business cannot flourish unless it respects and reflects community and environmental values and constraints. Rebuilding, the green shoots of a new business model are emerging. These can be seen in the value being attached to stakeholder perspectives, the shift towards low-carbon and resource-efficient technologies, and the explicit adoption of the sustainable development agenda. This session will examine the strategies that leading companies are developing and how Reporting can help to inform corporate decision-making and engage stakeholders in managing today’s eco-efficiency, innovating tomorrow’s business model, and ensuring good corporate governance. But, can companies always be transparent with their stakeholders and be competitive in the market?

In the last three years several governments - including Sweden, The Netherlands, Norway, and China - have issued policies on sustainability reporting for state-owned companies. Are these countries the exception to the rule, or are they leading a new trend? Have the affected state owned companies perceived this as an additional administrative burden, or as an opportunity to assess and profile their sustainability performance? Should state owned companies be treated differently from private companies? This session will explore these recent developments.

XBRL is rapidly changing the way in which business information is reported. In this session we will explore how XBRL can benefit both report preparers and readers. Leading experts will present their perspectives on the application of XBRL in sustainability reporting.

An increasing number of financial institutions are not only reporting on their own sustainability, but are also actively reviewing the sustainability performance of the companies in their own portfolios. Lenders, insurers and investors are increasingly analyzing hundreds of companies across entire indices (FTSE All Share, S&P 500) and within specific sectors, to assess hidden sustainability risks. While many have their own in-house analysts, there is also a growing reliance on intermediaries. Understand how and why mainstream financial institutions are taking sustainability reporting seriously.

Trends indicate that reporting on sustainability is moving beyond just annual publications. Fueled by unprecedented data flows and increasing complexity, this continuous demand for information requires new levels of transparency, and brings with it new issues. This session presents the highlights of a joint GRI & Volans report, The Transparent Economy, and invites the audience to an open debate on the findings.

One of the topics that has received specific attention in the past decade is climate change, and along with it reporting, with a rapid increase in carbon disclosure. A main driver has been the Carbon Disclosure Project, and related investor pressure on companies to report their risks and vulnerabilities, and to a lesser extent, their opportunities in relation to climate change. This session will reflect on the emergence, peculiarities, relevance and usefulness of carbon disclosure, as well as drivers and determinants.

Respondents to the first Readers’ Choice Survey and Awards in 2008 threw down the gauntlet; sustainability reporting generally needed to become more balanced and connected with the corporate strategy. Have reporting entities taken note and has sustainability reporting progressed? The 2nd Biennial Readers’ Choice Survey and Awards provides again unique insights into the readers’ views on sustainability reporting’s effectiveness. Did readers find more balanced and compelling accounts of companies’ successes, challenges and choices? Did they find reports to be more informative about corporate strategies and sustainability performance? This session will explore the readers’ verdict and what reporting entities can do to meet their readers’ expectations.

The ‘Earth Charter’ is an inspiring set of widely endorsed values and principles offering some of the most comprehensive guidance on how to build a just and sustainable global society. GRI recommends the Earth Charter to organizations that seek extended normative or ethical guidance on how they could advance sustainability and related global principles. In 2010, the Earth Charter celebrates its 10th anniversary – time to celebrate, but also to take stock and explore how the ethical grounding of sustainability reporting can be reinforced.

Sustainability reporters have the potential to promote gender equality by disclosing their organizations’ gender-responsive practices and performance. Yet reporting organizations rarely report much gender related information in their sustainability reports. This session will provide participants with the opportunity to learn from and discuss the gender issues they could report on and how to implement this. The session will also provide the opportunity to learn more about the GRI & IFC publication ‘Embedding Gender in Sustainability Reporting – a Practitioners’ Guide’.

Accounting for environmental liabilities is not a new issue, but the emergence of carbon markets and eco-system services has opened an entirely new area of accounting. Increasingly, annual reports are integrating sustainability information into documents requiring a new level of involvement and expertise from the accounting profession. How are accounts evolving as these issues become more relevant to the financial markets? What are the new assets and liabilities they are encountering and what is on the horizon for stakeholders?

During the last years there has been an increasing demand for software and digital tools to support the sustainability management systems of a range of diverse organizations. Meanwhile the requirements for monitoring organizational ESG data have become clearer as a result of the efforts of organizations like GRI. GRI has launched the GRI Certified Software and Tools program that seeks to meet the demands for content and for user friendly solutions for sustainability management.

Large businesses increasingly find themselves under pressure from consumers, governments and other stakeholders to demonstrate leadership and take responsibility for their supply chain. There’s a crucial role for reporting within the supply chain, yet, how is this best implemented? In this session, hear what trend setters and thought leaders are saying on this topic.

This session will evaluate recent trends in NGO accountability, specifically evaluating the likely impact of the GRI NGO sector supplement on NGO accountability in developing country contexts. This session will also address the dilemmas involved in measuring NGO performance and social impact.

What drives individuals to engage with the sustainability agenda? How may incentives be embedded into the reporting process? The Employee Motivation and Responsible Management session will be a highly interactive experience, based on participants’ practical experience. You will gain an insight into the way other people and organizations motivate employees around the sustainability agenda. You will learn and share some practical examples in developing strategies that engage employees.

Markets are starting to look at the connection between financial, environmental, social and governance information. While progress continues to be made in developing a common global approach to traditional financial reporting, development towards a sustainable economy will require organizations to Rethink and integrate key economic, social and environmental aspects of performance into their decision-making. Rebuilding their reports, pioneering companies are experimenting with various formats of integrated reporting to generate new insights for themselves and their stakeholders. What can we learn from these innovators? How will the integration of sustainability data into core reporting help organizations handle these issues, and how will the emergence of this new practice drive them to do so? This session will pick up early signals along the road toward integrated reporting and seek to identify the drivers and obstacles in this transformation. Report: Is integrated reporting the blueprint for corporate reporting in a sustainable economy?

Choosing the issues and indicators to report on, and determining the responsibility boundaries of what to report on, are among the most fundamental decisions to be taken in the preparation of any report. In this session practitioners share their perspectives on how to get these crucial decisions right.

The need to bring greater transparency to the supply chain is a challenge faced by large companies all around the world. Through the Global Action Network for Transparency in the Supply Chain program (GANTSCh), GRI offers the opportunity to large companies to support their (SME) suppliers in developing a GRI G3 sustainability report. In this session the audience can learn from the experiences of participating multinational enterprises and their suppliers.

This session will serve as a knowledge-sharing platform around current approaches to the external assurance of sustainability reports. A panel of representatives from the leading accounting firms, alternative assurance providers and the academic world will share their experiences and views on the assurance of ESG data. The session is primarily intended for professionals within the assurance field and other directly affected parties.

Hundreds of sustainability statements are being issued by organizations on a daily basis. A recent review of eco-labeling schemes identified over 300 of them, varying from international, local, product to the organizational level. Can a non-sustainable company produce a sustainable product? Can a non-sustainable product come from a sustainable company? Who decides and how do we know what claims are reliable? This panel will discuss the relationship between varying types of sustainability measurement and disclosure tools and help stakeholders make sense of the confusion in the market.

What is the ‘green economy’? What does it mean for union, consumer and business groups? What are the key transparency and accountability principles involved? Founded in 2009 by IUCN, WWF International, IIED and others, the Green Economy Coalition has been working with different social and economic groups. GRI is a coalition collaborator. This session explores the challenges and opportunities in making a transition to economies that are resilient, protect nature, and embrace social justice, responsibility and transparency.

To arrive at a better corporate carbon performance the use of carbon must be accounted for and carbon data be used. Poor data means that data will not be used. This panel will discuss both carbon measurement and accounting as well as the use of corporate carbon performance data. Presentations will cover existing guidelines and norms as well as carbon performance indicators and the assessment of corporate carbon performance in monetary terms.

Rethinking, global leaders representing the most widely used global ESG frameworks will reflect on the discussions in the previous main hall sessions: how does it all add up; what vision is emerging? Considering Rebuilding and Reporting they will discuss with a cross section of stakeholders what government, financial markets, business, civil society and labor organizations can do to ensure that we adopt the fundamental values and norms needed for a timely transition to a sustainable economy and how we will get the information needed to measure our progress. How much sustainability progress do we need by 2020 and how can [all] companies and markets be made to be transparent about the progress they are making?

This session will showcase the results of the second GRI-Radley Yeldar study on ‘Trends in Online Sustainability Reporting’. Following the presentation of some innovative examples and exploration of the role of the online GRI Content Index, an expert panel of reporters and report-users will discuss the benefits and potential drawbacks of online reporting. Session attendees will be involved via mobile devices and Twitter – they’ll be asked to consider the future of online reporting in terms of usability, stakeholder engagement, integrated reporting, and real-time reporting.

A general understanding of the human rights responsibilities of business has emerged. Yet many business leaders still struggle to define how to embrace human rights responsibilities and to embed them into reporting practice. This session focuses on these challenges by examining which human rights issues should be covered and what should be disclosed on practice and performance.

This session will present and debate a series of empirical and theoretical reflections on how a number of prominent organizations developed practical tools to enable environmental and social performance to be better connected with strategy and financial performance, and thereby embedded into their day-to-day operations and decision making.

Global leaders from business, politics and civil society will share their view on how to achieve a transition to a sustainable economy and reflect on what conference participants could do with the insights accumulated over the previous days. The GRI Chairman will close the conference reflecting on the lessons GRI should draw from participants’ discussions and recommendations.