Sustainability Reports: Corporate Sustainability or Corporate Signaling?

The OECD’s Blind Spot in Measuring Truth

The OECD’s Global Corporate Sustainability Report 2025 paints an optimistic picture of progress: more disclosures, more oversight, more alignment between profit and purpose. On the surface, it’s a celebration of how corporate governance is catching up with global sustainability goals.

But from the lens of transparency, verifiability, and truth — the core pillars of what we at TiiQu believe define trustworthy information — this report reveals something else entirely: a world of corporate signaling masquerading as sustainability.

Disclosure Without Truth

Yes, 91% of companies by market capitalization disclosed sustainability-related information in 2024. But what does disclosure actually mean when less than a third of all listed companies are even represented?

Worse, the majority of these disclosures rely on limited assurance — not reasonable assurance. In other words, more than half of what investors and the public are told about a company’s environmental and social impact is verified only to the extent that nothing looks obviously false.

If this were a financial audit, it would be unacceptable. But sustainability reporting remains trapped in a gray zone where perception outpaces verification. Truth, in this system, is still an optional checkbox.

Truth cannot be a product of trust alone

 — it should be proven, traceable, and measurable. It's just about making clear if a sustainability claim without evidence trails is "transparency" or "marketing".

Boards Are Engaged — But Are They Accountable?

The OECD highlights that 70% of boards now oversee climate-related issues. Impressive, until you realize that “oversight” rarely means measurable accountability.

Linking executive compensation to sustainability outcomes sounds progressive, yet it risks entrenching subjective scoring systems — where the metrics are designed by the same entities that benefit from them. If CEOs earn bonuses based on “climate leadership,” shouldn’t the data proving that leadership be accessible, comparable, and independently verifiable?

Does self-reported “risk management” prevent crises? Sustainability governance seems threatened by the same pattern. Without verifiable truth protocols, the ESG movement risks becoming the new subprime bubble — inflated by unchecked claims.

The Cash Paradox

The OECD points out a revealing contradiction: despite rising cash inflows, energy companies’ green investments remain flat. Dividends and share buybacks have tripled, while capital expenditures in clean technologies have barely moved.

So, once again, the issue isn’t a lack of money — it’s a lack of credible, investable projects. Possibly, it’s also a lack of trustworthy data. Institutional investors — who hold nearly half of all global public equity — are flying blind, forced to rely on inconsistent, unaudited sustainability metrics that make risk impossible to price accurately.

The OECD calls this a “pipeline problem.” I’d call it a truth deficit.

When Trust Becomes a Liability

It seems institutional investors are entangled in both the problem and the solution. They own 36% of equity in the top 100 GHG emitters — and 37% in the top green-patent filers. Not a comfortable place to be in. 

That duality should be a warning, and suggests data opacity makes it impossible to discern where genuine impact lies.

This is where truth technologies — from cryptographic verification to decentralized assurance models — must replace narrative-based ESG. The future of sustainability depends not on better storytelling, but on systems that measure truth as a utility.

Beyond ESG: Measuring the Shared Truth

Corporate sustainability, as described by the OECD, is still governed by voluntary compliance, selective verification, and aggregated narratives. It rewards those who disclose more — not necessarily those who do more.

At TiiQu, we believe the next evolution isn’t another layer of ESG reporting — it’s a new layer of proof. One that transforms sustainability from a moral stance into a measurable, shareable, and immutable dataset of actions and outcomes.

Until truth is systematized — until verifiable trust replaces assumed trust — sustainability will remain an elegant illusion.

In short: The OECD’s report shows a world proud of saying the right things. But it’s time we start proving them.

Be the Proof of Sustainability

If your company is truly committed to transparency, let your impact speak for itself. Share one of your sustainability reports with Truth Library and join the movement shaping the world’s verified knowledge.

We’ve made it simple to test how it works — just upload your PDF, and we’ll handle the rest: from transforming your report into bite-sized, verifiable insights to publishing it in the Truth Library.

👉 Upload your report here and take part in building a future where sustainability is proven, not proclaimed.