Clear guides to the frameworks that matter most to SMEs — and how they fit together.
VSME is the voluntary sustainability reporting standard for small and medium-sized enterprises, published by EFRAG in December 2024. It gives non-listed SMEs a single, proportionate way to report environmental, social and governance information — most often to answer requests from banks, investors and larger customers in their value chain.
The GHG Protocol is the world’s most widely used greenhouse gas accounting standard. Its Corporate Standard defines how organizations measure and report emissions across Scope 1, 2 and 3 — and it underpins almost every other framework, including VSME, CSRD and CDP.
The CSRD is the EU’s mandatory sustainability reporting law, under which in-scope companies report against the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) on a double-materiality basis. Its scope was significantly narrowed by the 2025–2026 EU "Omnibus" simplification: from financial years beginning on or after 1 January 2027, mandatory reporting applies mainly to companies with more than 1,000 employees and over €450 million net turnover.
CDP runs the world’s largest environmental disclosure system. Through a single annual questionnaire, companies report their climate, water and forests data — mainly at the request of investors and customers. It is run by a non-profit, free for companies to disclose through, and used by over 20,000 companies worldwide.
BRSR is India’s mandatory sustainability disclosure framework, introduced by the securities regulator SEBI. It has been mandatory for the top 1,000 listed companies by market capitalisation since FY2022–23, and is built on the nine principles of the National Guidelines on Responsible Business Conduct (NGRBC).
The Programa País Carbono Neutralidad (PPCN) is Costa Rica’s national carbon-neutrality programme, run by the Climate Change Directorate (DCC) of the Ministry of Environment and Energy (MINAE). Established in its 2.0 form by Executive Decree in 2018, it lets organisations, municipalities, products and events measure, reduce and verify their emissions to earn official carbon-neutrality recognition.