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Overview
The type and extent of external assurance for our Public Report is an issue with which we continue to explore and experiment. We believe that some form of third party assurance is becoming more and more a critical factor in successful Sustainable Development reporting, as evidenced by the prominence given to this topic on various by external rating agencies. However, the nature and extent of various assurance mechanisms, and their costs and benefits, continues to be debated and discussed with various stakeholders, and Dow is committed to participating in this dialogue.
We believe our past process has served us and our various stakeholders well. While not an explicit "audit" as some might desire, we have chosen to use various existing governance structures in our Company, and a limited number of external experts to review our report and provide comments. In other words, we sought – and will continue to seek – counsel on achieving transparency in terms of scope of report content, materiality of that content, and effectiveness of the public dialogue that is helping us to attain more useful and accepted Sustainable Development reporting mechanisms.
Where appropriate, we have incorporated their comments and suggestions. In cases where this was not possible, the comments and the reasoning behind them were documented for use in planning the next edition of our public report.
Globalization and increased access to information via the internet have helped expand the scope and direction of these reports. For this year, we have attempted to publish a report “in accordance with” the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) 2002 Guidelines.
In future years, we will continue to explore various mechanisms for providing additional assurance as desired by our stakeholders and as always, look for your comments to guide our exploration.
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