Gem of the day

There's been plenty of hullabaloo, reflection, fear and loathing recently over the validity of ethical indices/sustainability ratings/CSR rankings/whatever you want to call all those organisations that give us wildly varying measurements of how well companies are doing on sustainability.

And so out of this chaotic buzz come the magical Phase Two results of SustainAbility's project, Rate the Raters. It's an impressive methodology they've undertaken: an inventory of over 100 sustainability ratings and their attributes, accompanied by a survey of over 1000 "sustainability professionals" on their perceptions of rankings.

Their conclusions?

• Of the ratings most prominent today, the vast majority have emerged within the last ten years
• More than 60% of the ratings in the inventory depend wholly or in part on information submitted directly to ratings organizations, thereby rewarding companies with the greatest capacity to respond.

Seriously? That's it? I wrote about these very issues a few weeks back, admittedly with no robust research to back up my claims other than my own subjective perception of how ridiculous rankings have become. But in all seriousness, I expect more from a major project of this scale than conclusions this tepid.