GRI 101 site location reporting: polygons, size and proximity to sensitive areas
GRI 101: Biodiversity 2024, effective for reports published from 1 January 2026, asks an organisation to report the location of its sites with the most significant impacts on biodiversity — Disclosure 101-5 — including their size, their proximity to ecologically sensitive areas such as protected areas and Key Biodiversity Areas, and the activities carried out there, and recommends polygon outlines or maps rather than a list of place names. ERWAY Legality Assessment works on exactly that geometry: every site polygon checked against protected areas, Indigenous and community lands, heritage and wetland designations and threatened-species records, with the overlap in hectares and the record that supports it.
The site register is the polygons with their properties; the screening adds, per site, the designations it overlaps or lies near and the hectares involved. Proximity is stated in words the standard's readers recognise — inside, near, vicinity — with the default distances named and every approximate footprint labelled. Key Biodiversity Areas are not a layer in the product, and this is stated clearly. The GeoJSON export carries the geometry and a findings array per site; the CSV carries the same findings with their dates. The ESRS E4 page shows the EU disclosure that reuses the same record; the TNFD Locate page covers the framework GRI 101 aligns with.
What Disclosure 101-5 asks
For sites with the most significant biodiversity impacts: the location, preferably as polygon outlines or maps, with names and coordinates where available; the size of the site in hectares; whether it is in or near an ecologically sensitive area, and which; and the activities carried out there. The standard leaves the identification of significant impacts to the organisation; the location facts are what the product supplies.
What the export contains
Per site: the polygon and its area; each protected-area overlap with category, class, hectares and share; each International heritage designations or protected wetlands relation with its footprint and confidence; tenure status where the site lies on Indigenous or community land; threatened-species records inside and within a kilometre by threat category, kept separate from the outcome. Every row is dated to the source's last import, so the report can say when the record was checked.
What remains
The judgement of which impacts are significant, the impact and dependency analysis, the targets and the narrative. The product does not score biodiversity and does not determine ecological sensitivity beyond the designations it reads; where a national register is the authority, the page tells you to consult it. Its contribution is a site record the auditor can trace: polygon, designation, hectares, date.