Enforcing Double Materiality in Global Sustainability Reporting for Developing Economies: Reflection on Ghana’s Oil Exploration and Mining Sectors

Abstract

While the development of globally accepted sustainability reporting standards initiated by the IFRS Foundation has largely engaged stakeholders in developed economies, the stakes for developing economies could be compromised without an explicit consideration of their sustainability issues within this standard-setting framework. This paper examines the need to develop global sustainability reporting standards based on the principle of double materiality to warrant that both the target towards carbon net-zero by 2050 under the Paris Agreement and the subsequent promise to accelerate under COP26 are achieved with efficacy. Adopting a multiple-case study approach, this paper reveals the limitations of existing sustainability reporting in the absence of double materiality in a developing economy. Specifically, the analyses reveal limited climate-related disclosures among selected cases in Ghana. Available disclosures connote increasing GHG emissions over the period under consideration. This study also shows weak disclosure comparability across the companies following similar reporting standards. Overall, it argues that enforcement of double materiality to embrace sustainability issues impacting both developed and developing economies is necessary for an effective transformation towards a low-carbon global economy. It contributes to the existing body of knowledge by elucidating double materiality as a pertinent interdisciplinary concept and devising a holistic framework for the emerging global sustainability reporting system to underscore governance accountability for external costs to the environment. Global sustainability reporting standards with a myopic focus on conventional financial matters in the absence of double materiality remain a disclosure system with implausible impact on climate change.

Social Impact Measurement: A Systematic Literature Review and Future Research Directions

“…Are sustainability reporting standards capturing the risk and impact of projects and programs that are material to the organization and stakeholders? How can theory of change and logic model, concepts inherent to SIM, contribute to the integration of double materiality in sustainability reporting standards [15]? 9.…”

“…When it comes to the multiple dimensions of sustainability (ecological, social, and economic factors), reporting systems World 2023, 4 and rules are not as mature, nor is there international consensus, partly due to the varying needs of stakeholder groups and the complexity of disclosures [13,14]. Although there are calls for and progress towards harmonizing sustainability reporting standards, the benefit of comparability should not come at the cost of completeness [15]. Measuring and reporting on social impact at the organization level remains largely voluntary [1].…”

Developing climate neutrality among supply chain members in metal and mining industry: natural resource-based view perspective

“…Further, the unit of analysis in the majority of these case studies has either been a country (Cai et al, 2021;Denoncourt, 2022;Fraser et al, 2022;Kuzior and Grebski, 2022;Matikainen, 2022), a geographical region (Farmaki et al, 2021;Que et al, 2019;Yuan et al, 2022) or a Climate neutrality among supply chain members specific mineral (Dewulf et al, 2021;Kadel et al, 2022). Studies analyzing multiple cases have compared processing plants within the same company (Kadel et al, 2022), multiple projects across organizations (Kshetri, 2022), or multiple companies within the same region (Ng et al, 2022;Serfontein-Jordaan and Dlungwane, 2022). Despite these wide range of studies and different units of analysis, studies addressing overall climate change and climate neutrality from an organizational perspective are limited (Mishra et al, 2022).…”

“…Studies analyzing multiple cases have compared processing plants within the same company (Kadel et al. , 2022), multiple projects across organizations (Kshetri, 2022), or multiple companies within the same region (Ng et al. , 2022; Serfontein-Jordaan and Dlungwane, 2022).…”

Corporate sustainability disclosure on social media and its difference from sustainability reports:Evidence from the energy sector

“…Szczepankiewicz and Mućko (2016) conduct a content evaluation of CSR reports for the Polish energy and mining industry and find that these reports are similar only in structure but are significantly different regarding specific topics. Ng et al (2022) study the sustainability reports of Ghana's oil industry and mining sectors and find that the comparability of the information between these firms is weak.…”