Green Banking and Reporting of Bangladeshi Commercial Banks: An Observation Under Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)

Abstract

The paper examines the issues of green banking and reporting by commercial banks in Bangladesh under consideration of Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). The study is based on GRI 4 guidelines and we investigated bank’s reporting on green issues broadly in the aspect of environment only. The green banking concept is new in our banking sector and presently banks are following the guidelines of Bangladesh Bank (BB). This is an analytical research where ten commercial banks have been selected randomly. During the study period, data was collected from the secondary data sources, mainly from the annual report of 2010 to 2014. The result of the study showed that green banking and reporting are increased in the last five years, but not enough in the line of GRI 4 prescriptions. The analysis revealed that only a few banks maintained the guidelines of GRI 4 in preparing green banking and sustainable reporting. Most of the commercial banks in Bangladesh are followed traditional reporting along with Bangladesh Bank green banking guidelines in the absence of a standardized reporting standard. The analysis resulted that 100 percent (100%) banks disclosed information regarding environment. Furthermore, the analytical research found that according to GRI 4 environmental aspect majority banks provides information mostly of energy, biodiversity, emissions, effluents & waste, product & services, expenditure & investment. Moreover, the report also pointed that the policy makers of commercial banks are very concerned with fortifying sustainable development. The study concluded that for acquiring sustainable development Bangladeshi banking sector should follow GRI 4 principles and standard. As a result, GRI 4 guidelines should be mandatory in our banking sector for reporting green performance of commercial banks.