Data-related challenges are among the most significant obstacles preventing organisations from producing reliable sustainability information. ACCA’s latest report Sustainability reporting: working with estimates provides practical guidance on how to create sustainability information when data is incomplete, uncertain or unavailable.
Organisations are currently working with imperfect data to create sustainability information. When hard figures aren’t available, organisations may use reasonable and supportable information to make assumptions of a present or a future situation, to guide decisions.
Aaron Saw, Head of Corporate Reporting Insights – Financial at ACCA said: ‘As sustainability reporting requirements are still evolving, and globally accepted measurement methodologies for sustainability information have not been established, this guide provides valuable support to organisations everywhere as they begin the reporting process.’
The report explores the current approaches to estimate sustainability information for present situations. These approaches include using third-party or proxy data and deriving sustainability data from financial and other data.
In addition, some organisations are pursuing better-quality data through these measures:
- ensuring staff know why they’re collecting data
- designing systems and processes to collect sustainability data
- integrating systems and processes, as much as possible
- implementing processes and controls, and
- collaborating with the value chain.
While the pursuit of reliable sustainability data through direct measurement should continue, it needs to be acknowledged that estimates are sometimes necessary due to uncertainty or our evolving understanding of what needs to be measured. In the absence of high-quality data, the iterative improvements of estimates is a practical way of creating decision-useful sustainability information.
Reasonable estimates do not undermine the usefulness of the information if the estimates are accurately described and explained. Estimates should be revised over time to produce more decision-useful information as
- knowledge of a sustainability topic improves,
- assumptions are refined,
- processes and systems improve, and
- better-quality data becomes available.
