CSR key terms

An assessment approach requiring a company to report both how sustainability matters affect its financial performance and how its operations affect people and the environment.

The significance of a company's actual or potential effects on people, communities, and ecosystems, judged by severity, scale, scope, and likelihood rather than by financial consequence.

The threshold at which a sustainability matter could reasonably influence the economic decisions of investors and lenders because it affects cash flows, risk, or enterprise value.

A documented process for identifying, prioritizing, and validating the sustainability topics that are significant enough to report, including the criteria, thresholds, and stakeholder input used.

A two-axis visual plotting topics by importance to stakeholders against importance to the business, used to communicate prioritization results though rarely sufficient as standalone evidence.

Structured, ongoing dialogue with groups affected by or interested in a company's activities, used to inform materiality, validate disclosures, and improve accountability and decision quality.

People or groups whose lives, livelihoods, health, or rights are or may be affected by a company's operations, including those who cannot easily voice concerns.

The degree of importance a stakeholder group attaches to an issue, often weighed together with dependency and responsibility when deciding whom to engage and on what.

A modular set of globally used sustainability reporting standards covering universal disclosures, sector standards, and topic standards, emphasizing impacts on the economy, environment, and people.

Sustainability disclosure standards issued by the International Sustainability Standards Board, comprising IFRS S1 on general requirements and IFRS S2 on climate-related disclosures.

The ISSB climate standard requiring disclosure of governance, strategy, risk management, and metrics and targets, including Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas emissions.

A widely adopted framework organized around governance, strategy, risk management, and metrics and targets, which underpins many later climate disclosure regimes.

Industry-specific standards identifying financially material sustainability topics and metrics for defined sectors, now maintained within the ISSB's standard-setting structure.

The EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, which expands mandatory sustainability reporting to large and listed companies and requires assurance of reported information.

European Sustainability Reporting Standards setting out detailed disclosure requirements under the CSRD, organized into cross-cutting, environmental, social, and governance topical standards.

The most widely used accounting and reporting framework for greenhouse gas inventories, defining scopes, calculation approaches, and corporate reporting principles.

Direct greenhouse gas emissions from sources owned or controlled by the reporting company, such as fuel combustion in boilers, furnaces, and company vehicles.

Indirect greenhouse gas emissions from purchased electricity, steam, heating, or cooling, reportable using either a location-based or market-based method.

All other indirect emissions in a company's value chain, including purchased goods, transport, business travel, use of sold products, and end-of-life treatment.

A Scope 2 accounting approach that reflects emissions from electricity the company has deliberately chosen, such as contractual renewable energy purchases backed by instruments.

A tradable instrument evidencing that one unit of electricity was generated from a specified renewable source, used to support market-based Scope 2 claims.

A screening method for estimating Scope 3 emissions by multiplying supplier spend by industry-average emission factors, offering speed at the cost of accuracy.

A coefficient converting activity data, such as litres of fuel or kilowatt-hours consumed, into greenhouse gas emissions, ideally sourced from recognized, documented databases.

Quantitative measures of a process or operation, such as fuel consumed or distance travelled, that are multiplied by emission factors to calculate emissions.

A consolidation boundary in which a company counts emissions from operations over which it has authority to introduce and implement operating policies.

A consolidation approach that reports emissions in proportion to a company's ownership interest in an operation, regardless of who manages it day to day.

An assurance engagement providing a moderate level of confidence, typically involving inquiry and analytical procedures rather than extensive testing of underlying evidence.

A higher assurance level, comparable to a statutory audit, based on sufficient appropriate evidence and expressed as an opinion on whether information is materially correct.

The requirement that an assurance practitioner be free of relationships, financial interests, or self-review conflicts that could compromise objectivity in evaluating reported information.

The policies, data owners, review steps, and system controls designed to ensure sustainability information is complete, accurate, timely, and traceable to source.

Documentation tracing a reported figure back through calculations, transformations, and source systems to its origin, enabling verification and audit.

The full sequence of upstream suppliers, own operations, and downstream customers and product users whose activities are connected to the reporting company.

A forward-looking method exploring how climate-related physical and transition risks could affect strategy under plausible futures, including a well-below-two-degree pathway.

The potential financial loss arising from the shift to a lower-carbon economy, including policy changes, technology shifts, market preferences, and reputational effects.

The potential financial harm from climate-related hazards such as heat, flood, drought, or wildfire, classified as acute when event-driven and chronic when gradual.

Misrepresenting or overstating sustainability performance, commitments, or product attributes in ways that mislead stakeholders, whether intentional or through careless claims.

Deliberately under-reporting or staying silent about credible sustainability action, often to avoid scrutiny, which undermines comparability and stakeholder trust.

The defined set of entities, operations, and value chain segments covered by a sustainability report, which must be stated to make disclosures interpretable.

A machine-readable tagging language used to structure financial and sustainability disclosures so regulators and analysts can extract and compare reported facts automatically.

A format embedding XBRL tags directly within human-readable HTML documents, allowing one file to serve both readers and machine consumption.

A structured dictionary of reporting concepts, labels, and relationships used to tag disclosures consistently so that reported data is comparable across companies.

A classification system defining which economic activities qualify as environmentally sustainable based on substantial contribution, do-no-significant-harm, and minimum safeguard criteria.

The share of revenue, capital expenditure, or operating expenditure associated with economic activities meeting all technical screening and procedural criteria of a sustainability taxonomy.

A time-bound description of how a company will adapt its strategy, assets, and operations to a low-carbon economy, including targets, actions, and capital allocation.

An attitude of questioning assumptions and challenging unsupported assertions when preparing, reviewing, or assuring sustainability information, rather than accepting claims at face value.

The quality enabling users to identify similarities and differences between disclosures across periods and companies, supported by consistent units, boundaries, and definitions.

A published correction of previously reported sustainability figures, ideally disclosing the reason, magnitude, and effect on targets or trend claims.