Environmental Disclosure and Transparency in Public Company Disclosure Documents

"Although it has still not been convincingly demonstrated that good environmental and social practices create value for shareholders, it is clear that bad ones can destroy it."

George Dallas, Standard & Poor’s

Over the past 15 years, public companies have disclosed environmental liabilities in their financial statements. These companies have disseminated information about their environmental performance and risk factors in their annual reports and MD&A reports. As well, non-financial reports relating to their social and environmental performance are no longer exceptional.

Social pressures on companies to disclose more about their environmental performance and potential liabilities have, however, increased. Regulatory bodies have followed those social pressures to compel greater disclosure of such matters in their public documents.