For a long time, sustainability reporting was voluntary for German companies. As a result of the CSR Directive Implementation Act (CSR-RUG), it has been mandatory for certain large companies since the 2017 financial year. The reporting obligation covers five areas: Environmental concerns, employee concerns, social concerns, respect for human rights and combating corruption and bribery.
This study looks at reporting on environmental issues, with a focus on climate reporting. For the years 2018 and 2019, the reporting practices of all German publicly listed companies subject to reporting requirements are analysed. That is a total of 477 reports, of which 249 relate to 2018 and 228 to 2019.
As the CSR-RUG only provides few guidelines on what the specific report contents are and how these should be determined, the question centres on the extent, depth and quality of the reporting on environmental and climate issues by the companies subject to reporting requirements.
The survey showed that climate change is the dominant environmental issue. There is little quantitative information on other environmental issues. Biodiversity and air are the worst performers. In addition, transparency about supply chains is only created selectively and inconsistently. Overall, it can be seen that factors of good reporting are not taken into account across the board, which means that suitable instruments and framework conditions can be utilised much more to improve reporting.
The study also analyses which instruments, framework conditions and factors contribute to good reporting. These factors include materiality, temporal relationships, contextualisation and narrative, governance, environmental and sustainability management systems, frameworks and methods, reporting boundaries and the external audit. Based on the results of the evaluation and the analyses of the factors just mentioned, the authors of the study derive three principles and ten recommendations for action to further develop the reporting obligation.
To Download: Klima- und Umweltberichterstattung deutscher Unternehmen