However, it says that while there is great improvement over the past eight years, 33% of the companies – particularly the smaller ones – provide basic or no sustainability reporting.

Closer to home, the NZX is considering going down the same path as its Australian counterpart, and has begun a review to refresh the main board listing rules’ corporate governance reporting provisions.

“Any specific changes in this area will be subject to the outcomes of this review and feedback received during the process,” a spokeswoman says. “This work has commenced but is at an early stage and NZX is not in a position to comment further on the likely outcomes at this stage, or the timing for completion of the review.”

She notes that while NZX does not have an explicit reporting requirement like the ASX, “issuers are, of course, entitled to report on such matters if they wish. NZX certainly encourages good corporate governance practices.”

Sustainability risk management is a hot topic – 95% of the world’s top listed firms produce sustainability reports – and locally some of the larger companies and institutional investors are already making their own tracks. But the majority of listed New Zealand corporations are lagging international best practice since there are no guidelines.

New Zealand’s Sustainable Business Council is developing a paper, due next month, on what it thinks the NZX should do.

Executive director Penny Nelson says the councils is scanning what is happening internationally – including taking a “huge interest” in what the ASX has done – and will form a report on what will work best here.

“We’re already seeing transparency is increasingly important, and exposing these risks is crucial to create medium to long- term value.

“We tell our members to look at the big global trends and assess against their business and stakeholders, to figure out what the risks to manage are to stay in business in 25 years’ time.”

Ms Nelson disagrees that environmental and social sustainability could be brushed off as wishy-washy by some who may not take it seriously. Instead, she says it helps companies save money, manage risk and identify new business opportunities.

“It’s absolutely not a passing fad and it’s not woolly. A number of our top companies are already taking this really seriously and investors are increasingly asking for this.

“We need to clearly lay out the business value of doing this and have a really good think about this in New Zealand.”

Later this month, a group of institutional investors, including the NZ Superannuation Fund, will release corporate governance guidelines covering such topics as sustainability risk disclosure.

The NZ Super Fund has signed the UN Principles for Responsible Investment, which commits signatories to find out about the environmental and social governance of the entities in which they invest.

“Enhanced disclosure of environmental, social and governance risks has been a focus of NZ Super Fund company engagements for many years,” the fund’s responsible investment manager Anne-Maree O’Connor says.

“We believe environmental, social and governance factors are material to long-term returns.”

Jeremy Allen, the founder of energy reduction company ESP, says it’s a no-brainer for businesses to identify sustainability risks as this means savings can be found.

‘While New Zealand has lofty targets, we need immediate and meaningful change. We promote ourselves as being clean and green but we don’t own that statement very well. It’s important to us as a country that we do, because we hang our hat on that image.”

Gathering data and analysing it for sustainability reports “removes excuses and opinions,” says Mr Allen. “With no data it’s hard to prove these issues are going on. But once you know about it you can’t ignore it.”

By turning 5000 computers off each night, one of ESP’s big bank clients has saved $230,000 a year, adding up to more than $8 million since this was identified as a money sapper, he says.