Name: Zubian Pruthi, Navkiranjit Kaur Dhaliwal
Country: India

Year: 2026
Volume: Vol-13, Issue-2, 2026 ( July- Dec)
Page Number: 106-111
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23076246

Environmental reporting has become an integral part of corporate accountability as stakeholders increasingly demand transparent, comparable and reliable information on the environmental performance of firms. Two institutions have shaped the global architecture of such reporting: the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), which provides a voluntary, stakeholder-oriented disclosure framework, and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), which provides certifiable, process-based management-system standards. This paper examines these two regulatory frameworks in detail and reviews the extent to which companies in five Asia-Pacific economies — Japan, Malaysia, India, Taiwan and Australia — have incorporated environmental disclosure in their annual and sustainability reports. Based on a review of secondary literature, regulatory documents and disclosure trends, the paper finds considerable heterogeneity in the depth and quality of environmental disclosure across the region, driven largely by differences in the mandatory versus voluntary nature of reporting requirements, ownership structure, industry sensitivity and the level of regulatory maturity. The paper concludes that while adoption of GRI-aligned disclosure is rising steadily across the Asia-Pacific region, the extent of disclosure remains uneven, and continues to be shaped more by regulatory compulsion than by voluntary stakeholder engagement.

Keywords: Environmental Reporting, Global Reporting Initiative, ISO 14001, Environmental Disclosure, Asia-Pacific, Corporate Sustainability