Measuring and monitoring India’s progress toward environmental SDGs: variables influencing the advancement

The purpose of this study is the progressive assessment of Indian companies’ performance on environment-related sustainable development goals (SDGs). The study also aims to analyze the impact of a wide range of governance and firm-level determinants such as board size, gender diversity, board independence, top management commitment, presence of a sustainability committee and experience in nonfinancial reporting on environment-related SDGs’ performance.

Using a mixed-method approach, this paper developed a framework for assessing business progress on environment-related SDGs by mapping targets of SDGs with indicators of global reporting initiative (GRI) standards. The framework is applied to evaluate the sustainability report of 46 Indian companies for six years for environment-related SDG performance. Multivariate linear regression analysis examines the impact of various governance and firm characteristics on this performance.

The assessment framework identified improved reporting in all categories but significantly increased socio-environmental and socio-economic-environmental categories. Companies in the utility sector performed well, while those in the healthcare industry did not meet expectations. The pooled OLS panel regression results revealed a positive and significant impact of top management commitments, experience in nonfinancial reporting, board gender diversity and sustainability committee on the environment-related SDG disclosure scores.

Geographical limitations may limit the generalization in developed countries. The developed SDG assessment framework may help firms choose a business strategy for greater contribution and a governance structure to match this strategy. Investors can receive insight from measured performance, and regulators can lay policies, targets and incentives for different industries based on the interpretation of performance.

This study developed an assessment framework to capture the positive business contributions to environment-related SDG and its trends. It sheds light on the critical interaction between corporate governance, management committees, experience in financial reporting and environmental SDG performance to increase the understanding of the determinants of SDG performance.