The way in which organizations account for their role in society is changing rapidly. The demand from stakeholders for information, both financial and non-financial, is increasing rapidly. In 2022, society is reasonably skeptical about the reliability of the shared ‘green’ information. There are also too many examples of ‘greenwashing’, boasting with incorrect green numbers towards the public. In this context ‘greenwashing’ can be labeled as a form of social fraud.
More and more organizations understand this and (voluntarily) show their accountability by providing a sustainability report, CO2 emission reports and other types of reports. It’s crucial for their credibility that organizations can demonstrate the information they provide is reliable. New European regulations concerning information on sustainability in annual reports lead to the fact that large companies will shortly be obligated to have an assurance engagement performed for the mandatory sustainability information. This obligation will also have an impact on companies which are not directly implicated in these new EU regulations, but are nevertheless impacted through their close collaboration with partners that do need to comply. In other words, green, reliable information is becoming a relevant for all companies, large and small.
