Global Reporting Initiative: How to navigate the latest GRI standards

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Standards stand out as the most widely adopted reporting framework, guiding over 14,000 organisations worldwide to disclose their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) impacts transparently and comprehensively. Experts from Nexio Projects outline what is needed to adopt and navigate the latest GRI Standards.

The 2025 GRI Standards framework is organised into three interconnected parts to ensure relevance and adaptability across sectors and topics:

Universal standards
These apply to all organisations and include foundational principles and disclosures about governance, stakeholders, and materiality. Key ones are GRI 1: Foundation, GRI 2: General Disclosures, and GRI 3: Material Topics.

Sector standards
Designed specifically for industries with significant sustainability impacts, these standards capture sector-specific risks and opportunities. The upcoming GRI 14 Mining Sector standard (effective 2026) exemplifies this approach.

Topic standards
These focus on specific environmental, social, and economic issues like energy consumption, water use, anti-corruption, biodiversity, and worker safety.

A crucial concept underpinning GRI is materiality, which requires organisations to prioritise disclosures on topics with the most significant impact on the economy, environment, and people – including human rights. This double perspective ensures reports address both business risks and broader societal concerns.

GRI also introduced simplified reporting options: organisations may report “in accordance with” the full GRI requirements or “in reference to” the Standards, which offers a lighter approach for those beginning their sustainability reporting journey. Regardless of the option chosen, adherence to core principles – accuracy, balance, clarity, timeliness, comparability, completeness, sustainability context, and verifiability – is mandatory to ensure credibility and usefulness of reports.

Reporting options include:

• In accordance with GRI: Full compliance with all requirements including sector and topic disclosures, publishing a GRI content index, and notifying GRI.
• In reference to GRI: A lighter option for organisations beginning their journey, requiring fewer disclosures.

All reports must uphold reporting principles such as accuracy, balance, clarity, timeliness, comparability, completeness, sustainability context, and verifiability to ensure high-quality information.

Preparing for GRI reporting

Before drafting disclosures, an effective preparation phase is essential to align internal processes with GRI requirements. Effective GRI reporting starts with strong preparation.

Materiality assessment
Fundamental to GRI reporting, this process involves mapping and prioritising sustainability topics by significance to stakeholders and business context. It requires engagement with diverse stakeholder groups and use of quantitative and qualitative methods.

Stakeholder engagement
Regular and meaningful engagement is key, enabling organisations to understand expectations, validate material topics, and build trust. Documentation of this engagement enhances report credibility.

Strategic alignment
Embedding GRI reporting into corporate sustainability strategies helps integrate disclosures with overall business goals and risk management frameworks. Cross-functional teams ensure that ESG data is gathered efficiently and linked with organisational decision-making.

Regulatory alignment
Aligning GRI reporting with frameworks like CSRD can reduce duplication and support smoother compliance given their strong conceptual overlap (double materiality for CSRD, transparency).

Linking materiality to corporate strategy fosters integrated thinking – ensuring sustainability goals influence decision-making and risk management. Sustainability managers should also recognise emerging regulatory frameworks, especially Europe’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), which has strong alignment with GRI’s comprehensive and double materiality approach.

Early alignment reduces duplication and prepares organisations for seamless compliance across multiple jurisdictions. Clear documentation of the materiality process in sustainability reports builds transparency and accountability.

Navigating the GRI standards framework

GRI’s universality is reinforced by its layered standards: each reporting entity must consider which apply and how to combine them effectively.

• GRI 1: Foundation (2021) – sets out the “why” and “how” of reporting, emphasising the role of sustainability in long-term value creation. This standard details key principles and concepts.
• GRI 2: General Disclosures (2021) – covers organisational profile descriptions, governance structures, management approaches, and stakeholder engagement processes—critical to demonstrate accountability and transparency.
• GRI 3: Material Topics (2021) – guides organisations on how to report on prioritised material impacts, including management strategies and performance indicators.

Sector Standards are crucial for industries like mining, oil & gas, coal, agriculture, and aquaculture, enabling tailored reporting on the most relevant impacts and business relationships. Complement Sector Standards with Topic Standards to address specific issues such as:

• GRI 302: Energy
• GRI 303: Water and Effluents
• GRI 304: Biodiversity
• GRI 403: Occupational Health and Safety
• GRI 205: Anti-corruption

Organisations must disclose reasons for any omissions using accepted justifications: non-applicability, legal prohibitions, confidentiality, or incomplete information. Clear documentation of omissions contributes to report reliability. If certain disclosures cannot be achieved, organisations must communicate valid reasons (for example: legal prohibitions, confidentiality constraints, or unavailable data) openly to maintain trust.

Linking GRI to other standards and reporting trends in 2025

A key evolution in 2025 reporting is the drive toward interoperability between frameworks, fuelled by efforts to reduce reporting complexity for companies and improve data usability for stakeholders. GRI plays an essential complementary role in this ecosystem:

• ISSB (International Sustainability Standards Board) focuses on investor-centric disclosures, emphasising financial materiality. GRI’s double materiality approach enriches this by reflecting broader stakeholder concerns.
• CSRD and ESRS (European Sustainability Reporting Standards) focus on regulatory compliance and detailed sustainability requirements within the EU, closely aligned with GRI principles and disclosures.

Recent developments include official alignments and equivalencies, particularly allowing climate-related disclosures under ISSB standards (such as IFRS S2) to satisfy corresponding GRI requirements. Such integrations enable organisations to streamline disclosures across different frameworks, minimise redundancy, and enhance comparability.

The launch and adoption of the GRI Sustainability Taxonomy, an XBRL-based digital taxonomy, accelerate this trend by enabling machine-readable, standardised sustainability data submission. This innovation facilitates faster analysis, auditability, and data verification, supporting transparency and stakeholder engagement.

Moreover, evolving reporting trends in 2025 emphasise:

• Increased focus on double materiality and systemic impacts beyond traditional ESG.
• Demand for integration of nature and biodiversity metrics alongside climate disclosures.
• Rising expectations for social impact transparency, including human rights and DEI.
• Greater use of digital tools and platforms to streamline data collection, validation, and storytelling.

Upcoming changes and key 2026 updates

Several significant changes scheduled for 2026 are essential for sustainability teams to anticipate and prepare for starting now.

GRI 101: Biodiversity 2024
This much-anticipated update, effective January 1 in 2026, replaces the 2016 Biodiversity Standard and introduces comprehensive enhancements. It requires organisations to:

• Report on biodiversity impacts across their entire supply chain, not only direct operations.
• Disclose location-specific impacts to biodiversity and ecosystems.
• Identify and disclose the direct drivers of biodiversity loss linked to business activities.
• Report related social impacts, including effects on local communities and indigenous peoples.

These expanded disclosures align with the growing global focus on nature preservation and the biodiversity crisis and underscore the importance of transparent, risk-informed corporate decision-making.

GRI 102: Climate Change 2025 & GRI 103: Energy 2025
Released in mid-2025, these new Topic Standards set new benchmarks for climate and energy reporting. Effective January 1, 2027, with preparatory relevance from 2026, organisations should start aligning their data and governance processes in 2026:

• The Climate Change standard introduces new requirements on transition plans, particularly around just transition social aspects (such as labour and community impacts), carbon credits, and alignment with the evolving global climate policy landscape.
• The Energy standard demands more detailed disclosures on energy policies, consumption patterns, and efficiency measures, harmonised with climate-related financial disclosure standards like ISSB.

Sector standards alignment for 2026
As the updated Topic Standards take effect, corresponding Sector Standards (for example: mining, oil & gas, coal, agriculture) will be aligned and required to reflect these enhanced disclosure requirements starting in 2026. Organisations operating in these sectors will need to integrate the new biodiversity, climate, and energy disclosures into their sustainability management and reporting systems accordingly.

Digital reporting and interoperability
Supporting these content updates is the ongoing rollout of the GRI Sustainability Taxonomy, a machine-readable reporting taxonomy designed to facilitate data management, validation, and interoperability with frameworks such as ISSB and CSRD. This digital evolution will improve efficiency and data quality as organisations transition to more integrated sustainability reporting approaches.

Best practices and common challenges

While GRI Standards provide a comprehensive blueprint, practical challenges arise during implementation:

• Data integrity and quality – Building reliable internal data collection and verification mechanisms, including third-party assurance, is crucial to underpin trustworthy reports.
• Cross-functional collaboration – Sustainability reporting requires involvement across departments—finance, legal, operations, HR—necessitating governance structures to coordinate data flows.
• Supply chain complexity – Collecting data from suppliers and partners often proves difficult but is critical for full value chain transparency. Technologies like blockchain and supplier portals are emerging as solutions.
• Balancing transparency with confidentiality – Organisations must navigate disclosure expectations while protecting sensitive information. Clear policies and justifications for omissions help maintain credibility.
• Continuous improvement – As standards evolve, sustainability teams should embed cyclical review mechanisms to update materiality assessments, data systems, and stakeholder engagements regularly.

Leading organisations use GRI reporting insights to inform sustainability strategy refinement, strengthen stakeholder relations, and improve ESG risk management.

The GRI Standards remain a cornerstone of credible sustainability reporting globally, offering tools to enhance transparency, accountability, and strategic value in 2025. Their comprehensive approach, coupled with increasing digitalisation and framework interoperability, empowers organisations to meet regulatory demands and stakeholder expectations effectively.