Video transcript
Most companies know they need a sustainability report. Fewer are clear on what one actually is. Here is what goes into one, and what makes a UAE report different. It answers a different question from the annual report. Not how it performed, but how it manages impact and risks. A vague claim is a sentiment. A measured figure against a 2020 baseline is a disclosure.
It sits alongside the annual report, telling one story. Integrate the content, or publish it standalone. Integrated is one document to keep in sync. Standalone is fuller, with a second sign off. What goes in? 5 building blocks. Materiality first, then metrics with baseline years and method. Targets and progress, then governance with a named owner. And a named framework, held steady each year.
Two frameworks dominate. GRI asks what the company does to the world. The ISSB asks what the world does to its finances. The guides reference both, so most report from one set. The DFM guide reads like a benchmark. Recent versions list around 32 metrics across 3 pillars. So each figure sits in one place, one basis. Confirm the current version, since it changes.
Abu Dhabi comes at it from another angle. Its ADX guidance, from 2019, centers on materiality. Built on UN Sustainable Stock Exchanges recommendations. DFM gives the metrics, ADX gives the materiality. Does every company have to publish one? No. Mandatory only for listed public joint stock companies. Private and free zone firms are usually exempt. Many report voluntarily, for lenders and tenders.
What sets a UAE report apart: Arabic and English. This is not translation added at the end. Arabic reads right to left, so the layout is rethought. One grid holds both scripts, equals from page one. The data table is where a bilingual report is exposed. A figure rounded differently reads as an error. So feed both from one governed figure and termbase. A bilingual proofing pass confirms every number matches.
Present it to be read: headline first, then detail. Build the data architecture and bilingual grid before design begins. Then both languages stand as equals from page one. Plan yours with Walk Production.
Most companies know they need a sustainability report. Fewer are clear on what one actually is. A sustainability report answers a different question from the annual report: not “how did the business perform?” but “how does the business manage its impact, and the risks that come with it?” Getting that framing right is where a well-structured sustainability report begins.
This guide explains what a sustainability report is, what goes into one, how the GRI and ISSB frameworks differ, and how the UAE context shapes the document for listed companies, including the part that sets a UAE report apart: producing it in Arabic and English. It is written for communications, investor relations and finance teams preparing a sustainability report for the first time, or raising the standard of the next one.
A note on scope. Walk Production designs and writes annual reports, sustainability reports, and integrated reports across Malaysia and Singapore, now serving the UAE market. We are not an audit, assurance, ESG advisory or legal firm. This guide covers what to present and how to present it clearly. Confirm your obligations against the official sources cited below.
What is a sustainability report?
A sustainability report is a company’s structured account of how it manages its environmental, social and governance (ESG) impacts and the risks tied to them. It sets out material topics, performance metrics against a baseline year, targets and trajectory, and governance oversight, referenced against a recognized framework. Investors, regulators and stakeholders use it to read non-financial performance consistently, year on year.
The line between a report and a statement of intent is worth holding. “We care about sustainability” is a sentiment. A Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions figure measured against a defined 2020 baseline year using the GHG Protocol, disclosed under GRI or ISSB standards and with the board member accountable for it named, is a disclosure. What separates the two is specificity and a method a reader can check.
That distinction is the whole reason the UAE document has changed. ESG content used to be a narrative of intent bolted to the back of the annual report. Once the exchanges set out a defined list of metrics, the question stopped being how eloquently a company describes itself and became whether it can report the same data points, on the same basis, year after year. A sustainability report, properly built, is the place that disclosure lives.
What goes into a sustainability report?
A sustainability report typically carries five building blocks: a materiality assessment, performance metrics with baseline years and methodology, targets and progress, a governance section showing board oversight, and a named framework reference.
The materiality assessment comes first, and on the projects we run it is the piece that decides everything downstream. Before a reader can trust the metrics, they need to understand why those topics were chosen and how the company identified them as significant. A report that opens with data before explaining the selection has skipped its own foundation. The assessment sets the agenda: the topics judged material earn the prominence of a full spread, while the rest sit in the data index, and a report that weights every topic equally signals that the prioritization work was never done.
Performance data should state the baseline year and the measurement methodology clearly, ahead of the tables. An emissions figure on its own tells a reader very little. The same figure set against a baseline, a scope boundary and a stated calculation method is something they can interrogate and compare year on year. Targets and trajectory then sit alongside that data: what the company is working toward, by when, and how performance has moved since the last report.
Governance closes the loop. The reader needs to see who on the board is accountable for the risk behind each metric, because a metric with no owner named reads as a number rather than a commitment. A framework reference completes the picture, telling the reader the report is built on a recognized basis. Naming the framework and holding to that choice year to year is the credibility signal that distinguishes structured disclosure from a narrative assembled from scratch each cycle.
For a UAE company there is a sixth practical building block that the five above all feed into: the data architecture underneath them. A metric is only comparable if it lives in one governed place, on one stated basis, and is drawn from there every time it appears. On the cycles that run smoothly, that architecture is built before any design begins, and in a bilingual report it has to be planned alongside the Arabic and English grid from the start, because the same governed figure has to surface identically in both languages. More on that below.
Sustainability report vs annual report: what is the difference?
An annual report is the year-end account to shareholders: audited financials, governance and strategic narrative. A sustainability report describes how the company identifies and manages its material ESG matters. UAE companies can integrate ESG content into the annual report or publish a standalone document. Either way, the two should tell one consistent story.
| Annual report | Sustainability report | |
|---|---|---|
| Primary reader | Shareholders, regulators, analysts | ESG analysts, raters, regulators, broader stakeholders |
| Core content | Audited financials, governance, strategy | Material ESG topics, climate disclosure, targets, performance data |
| Basis | Exchange rules, CMA governance requirements | DFM / ADX ESG guidance, chosen framework (GRI, ISSB-aligned) |
| Format | Single regulated document | Integrated into the annual report or published standalone |
The integrated route gives one document but requires keeping financial and ESG narratives in sync. The standalone route allows a fuller sustainability document at the cost of a second sign-off and production run. The choice depends on the depth of the ESG program, the production resource available, and the audience.
For a deeper look at both documents together, including the reporting calendar and integration considerations, see our guide on annual reports and sustainability reports for UAE companies.
GRI and ISSB: the two frameworks in one line
Two global frameworks dominate sustainability reporting, and the cleanest way to hold them apart is by what each measures. The GRI Standards take an impact-materiality view, and the ISSB’s IFRS S1 and S2 take a financial-materiality view. In one line: GRI asks what the company does to the world; the ISSB asks what the world does to the company’s financials.
That difference decides which one a reader reaches for. GRI shapes the stakeholder-facing impact narrative and the topic structure, organized around an organization’s effect on the economy, environment and people. The ISSB’s standards are investor-facing, with IFRS S1 and S2 covering general sustainability-related financial disclosures and climate-specific risk, the latter built on the four TCFD pillars. Both UAE exchange guides reference these frameworks, which is why most companies report against both from one underlying data set rather than treating them as a choice. The full framework treatment, including how the metrics map across all four references, sits in the pillar guide linked above; for a definition-level report, the one-line distinction is the part to keep.
Frameworks and exchange guides set what to disclose. This guide is about communicating it clearly.
The DFM and ADX guides, the GRI Standards, and the ISSB’s IFRS S1 and S2 shape what a sustainability report contains. They are referenced here as context for presenting that content clearly and bilingually, not as compliance advice. Confirm the applicable requirements and your obligations with your advisers and the official sources cited.
How the DFM metric set shapes a UAE report
In the UAE, listed companies on the Dubai Financial Market and Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange publish annual ESG or sustainability disclosures under the Corporate Governance Code, overseen by the Capital Market Authority (CMA, formerly the Securities and Commodities Authority or SCA). What makes the Dubai end of the regime distinctive is that the DFM Guide to ESG Reporting reads less like a style guide and more like a benchmark metric set.
Recent versions of the guide set out a defined list of around 32 ESG metrics across the three pillars, intended to make disclosure comparable company to company and year to year, with issuers pointed toward industry-specific frameworks for sector detail. The metric count and content are revised periodically, so confirm the current version on the DFM website before you fix your disclosure structure. The number matters less than what a defined metric set does to the production job.
A defined metric set changes three things about how the document is built. Each metric needs a stable home, so a reader or an analyst running a screen can find the same data point in the same place each year, which argues for a dedicated ESG performance section rather than figures scattered through the chairman’s statement. Each metric needs its basis stated, because a figure without its unit, boundary and method is not comparable even to the same company’s number from last year. And each metric benefits from a multi-year view, since a single year’s number tells a reader little, while the same metric across several years with a line of commentary on any inflection is what turns a data point into a disclosure an investor can use.
The discipline the DFM guide imposes is, in effect, the discipline of a recurring dataset. The companies that handle it well build a repeatable ESG data architecture in year one and refine it each cycle, rather than redesigning the section every year. For the disclosure mechanics and a full DFM and ADX comparison, see the companion post on ESG reporting in the UAE.
ADX, materiality, and the international alignment
Abu Dhabi approaches the same goal from a slightly different angle, and it is the angle worth knowing because it reinforces the materiality spine of the whole report. ADX issued its ESG disclosure guidance for listed companies in 2019, on the recommendation of the United Nations Sustainable Stock Exchanges initiative, and has revised it since. The current ADX ESG Disclosure Guidance for Listed Companies frames disclosure around a materiality assessment rather than a flat list to populate.
That international footing is not incidental. The Sustainable Stock Exchanges initiative is a peer-to-peer platform through which exchanges, investors and regulators work to improve corporate ESG transparency, and guidance built on its recommendations tends to map cleanly onto the global frameworks. So ADX disclosure sits comfortably alongside GRI and the ISSB standards, and it foregrounds a materiality assessment as the first step rather than an optional one. For an Abu Dhabi issuer, that puts the materiality work at the front of the document, where it decides which topics earn prominence and which sit in the index. Confirm the current ADX indicator set on the ADX website, since it too is revised over time.
For an issuer reporting against both exchanges, the practical reading is simple: DFM gives you a comparable metric set to populate, and ADX foregrounds the materiality logic that decides how you weight and present it. The two are complementary, and a well-built report serves both from one governed dataset.
Do all UAE companies have to publish a sustainability report?
No. The mandatory requirement applies to onshore listed public joint stock companies on DFM and ADX. Private companies, free-zone entities, and multinational subsidiaries are not generally required to publish one, though many do so voluntarily. Confirm your obligations with your advisers, DFM, ADX and the CMA.
| Company type | Reporting position |
|---|---|
| Listed PJSCs on DFM or ADX | Mandatory ESG disclosure under the Corporate Governance Code |
| Private companies | Not generally required; many report voluntarily |
| Free-zone companies | Not generally required; group-parent ESG mandates often apply |
| Multinational subsidiaries | Group policy usually determines scope; local requirement generally does not apply |
A private UAE company may report voluntarily for several reasons: lenders increasingly request ESG data; public-sector tenders may include sustainability criteria; and group-parent ESG frameworks often apply regardless of listing status. Voluntary reporting is more common than the regulatory floor suggests.
Producing the report in Arabic and English
Many UAE sustainability reports are produced in English, and Arabic and English bilingual reporting is common, particularly for companies with significant domestic or government stakeholders. Producing one well is not translation added at the end. It is a design and editorial discipline that shapes the document from the first page, and it is the part of a UAE report that most often separates a polished one from a serviceable one. Language requirements for any specific filing sit with the exchanges and the CMA, so confirm the current obligation; the craft below applies wherever a report is bilingual by choice or by requirement.
Right-to-left layout is a structural decision, not a mirror flip. Arabic reads right to left, which inverts the natural reading order of a spread. The eye enters from the opposite side, so the placement of headlines, pull quotes, charts and page furniture has to be rethought for the Arabic version, not flipped mechanically. Binding direction, the cover, and the flow from page to page all change. A layout planned only for left-to-right English and then reversed tends to land the visual emphasis in the wrong place.
Arabic text expansion changes the grid and the page count. The same content runs to a different length in Arabic than in English, and the difference is not uniform across headings, body copy and captions. That affects column widths, line counts, page breaks and the overall extent of the document, so the Arabic and English versions rarely match page for page. If the grid is built around English copy fit and the Arabic is poured in afterward, the result is overset text and broken spreads. The grid has to be planned to hold both languages from the start.
Typography pairs two scripts into one system. Arabic and Latin type have different vertical proportions, different baseline behavior, and different demands on line spacing. A heading size that sits well in English can feel cramped or oversized in Arabic. Pairing an Arabic typeface with the Latin one so the two read as one design, rather than two fonts sharing a page, is one of the clearest signals of a report produced bilingually rather than translated.
Numerals need a deliberate rule. Arabic-language reports may use Western Arabic numerals or Eastern Arabic-Indic numerals, and financial tables, dates and units have to follow one consistent rule across the document. Where the same figure appears in both versions, the numeral treatment, the decimal and thousands separators, and the unit labels all have to be reconciled so a reader comparing the two sees the same number presented the same way.
Parallel and sequential layouts serve different content. A parallel layout places both languages on one spread, which suits shorter, high-visibility sections such as the chairman’s statement and the governance summary, where seeing both together carries weight. A sequential layout runs the full report in one language then the other, which suits dense ESG data tables and financial notes, where two languages on a spread would crowd the page. Many reports mix the two: parallel for the front narrative, sequential for the back data. Deciding which sections use which is part of structuring the document, not a late formatting call.
Equal-treatment proofing keeps both versions honest. The risk in any bilingual report is that one language becomes the source and the other a derivative that drifts. Equal-treatment proofing means each version is read and proofed in its own right, by a reader fluent in that language, against the same data, so neither reads as an afterthought, and it includes checking that figures, dates, names and ESG metrics match exactly between the two.
Our team produces bilingual reports in Bahasa Malaysia and English across Malaysia and Singapore, and the same discipline transfers directly to Arabic and English. The scripts differ; the rigor that keeps two languages in step does not. The single most useful habit we carry over is to build the ESG data architecture and the bilingual grid before design begins, so both languages are constructed as equals from page one rather than reconciled under deadline. You can see how that rigor shows up in our publication design and report copywriting.
The bilingual ESG data table
The data index is where a bilingual report is most exposed, because a table leaves nowhere for an inconsistency to hide. It is worth a worked example, because the failure modes are specific and so are the fixes.
Picture a single emissions row that has to read identically in the Arabic and English versions. Three things tend to go wrong. A figure rounded to one decimal place in English surfaces with two in Arabic, and in a table a reader may set side by side, that precision mismatch reads as an error even when the underlying value is the same. A metric label drifts, named one way in the Arabic narrative and another in the Arabic index, so a reader cannot tell whether two names point to one metric. And a table reversed pixel for pixel to suit right-to-left reading strands the totals where they are hardest to find, because the leading column and the subtotal markers were mirrored rather than re-placed for where an Arabic reader’s eye actually enters.
The fixes are equally specific. Feed both versions from one governed source figure, so the Arabic and English tables fill from the same entry rather than being keyed in twice, and they agree by construction instead of by luck. Take every row label and unit straight from the agreed termbase, so the name in the table matches the name in the text, in each language. And order the columns for the reader rather than the mirror, placing the leading column, headers and totals where each language expects them. A dedicated bilingual proofing pass then confirms that every figure matches across both versions, in the same unit and precision, under the same label, which is the kind of check general proofreading misses because a transposed digit is invisible in a table unless someone is checking the numbers on purpose.
How to present a sustainability report so people read it
Lead with the headline, then the detail. A performance summary or ESG dashboard at the front gives the reader the key findings before the full tables. It frames the data without replacing it.
Design the charts rather than generating them. A multi-year emissions trend is read in seconds; that element determines whether the rest of the section gets read. A consistent visual language across the financial and ESG halves signals one document, not two reports stitched together, and that consistency has to hold across two scripts in a bilingual report.
Make tables scannable: clear column headers, aligned figures, units stated once, and brief commentary at inflection points. Turning audited metrics into a document a non-specialist can navigate, in either language, is a production discipline in its own right, and it is the core of what sustainability report design sets out to do.
How Walk Production can help
Walk Production is a report design and copywriting studio with a track record across Malaysia and Singapore, now serving the UAE market. We handle report copywriting, disclosure layout, data visualization, bilingual production, and print-ready file delivery, working alongside the reporting team and advisers who own the content and compliance decisions. We are not an audit, assurance, ESG advisory or legal firm.
If your next sustainability report cycle is open, the most useful early step is building the ESG data architecture and the bilingual grid before design begins, so the metric set is comparable year to year and both languages are constructed as equals from page one. To see how that discipline reads on a finished document, look through the reports and disclosures we have produced, including our sustainability report for Intercontinental Specialty Fats, a specialty fats manufacturer, part of our Malaysia and Singapore reporting portfolio, or read about our report copywriting offer. When you are ready, talk to the team about the cycle ahead.
