Brazilian and Indian companies dominated the inaugural Global
Reporting Initiative (GRI) Readers’ Choice Awards for
sustainability reporting at the Amsterdam Global Conference on
Sustainability and Transparency.
Brazilian energy giant
Petrobras, a major sponsor of the conference but not the awards
ceremony, claimed the best report of all stakeholder groups as well
as winning the best report as judged by civil society.
Gas Natural SDG of Spain won the media award for best report
while Indian bank ABN Amro India claimed the financial markets
award. Organisations from Russia, Argentina and Greece also earned
awards, beating off organisations in traditional sustainability
countries in Europe.
The awards came under media scrutiny because the major sponsor
of the conference claimed the top prize. However, GRI chief
executive Ernst Ligteringen told The Accountant an
independent integrity committee was called upon to ensure Petrobas
did not influence the competition in any way.
“The readers’ choice awards as a project was sponsored by
Rabobank and Acciona. Two years ago Petrobas decided they would
sponsor [the conference]. We did ask internally the question that
this might be wrongly perceived because Petrobas, even before we
thought of a readers’ choice awards, decided to sponsor this
conference. So the integrity committee examined it and they said
that there is absolutely no way Petrobas could have influenced
this.”
More than 1,700 readers in 70 countries participated in the
scoring process, marking 800 reports from 50 countries.
