To address this issue, White recommended that Baue & McElroy gather a collective voice to support more robust enactment of Sustainability Context. So Baue & McElroy pulled together about 150 global experts to join the Susty Context Group, in order to conduct ad hoc, opt-in advocacy to advance Sustainability Context. In its first year, the Group submitted a raft of Public Comments to:

• Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Universal Standard Public Comment by r3.0, for signatures of SCG Members
• International Integrated Report Council (IIRC) Public Comment Letter 2020 on its International <IR> Framework (Submitted 19 August 2020 with 26 signatories);
• Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) on G4, the fourth generation of Sustainability Reporting Guidelines (Submitted 24 September 2012 with 66 signatories), and its GHG Emissions Guidance (Submitted 12 November 2012 with 27 signatories);
• International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) on its International <IR> Framework (Submitted 8 July 2013 with 63 signatories);
• Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SAAB) on its Conceptual Framework (Submitted 26 July 2013 with 37 signatories);
• Global Initiative for Sustainability Ratings (GISR) on its Principles (Submitted 2 April 2013 with 57 signatories).

Of these four organizations, GISR was the only one that addressed the Susty Context Group’s input. (When GISR officially disbanded in 2019, it transferred custodianship of its Principles to r3.0.)Perhaps the most significant early influence the Susty Context Group exerted was in instigating what became the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi). At the 2012 Ceres Conference in Boston, SCG Co-Founder Baue pointed out to World Resources Institute (WRI) VP for Science & Research (and SCG member) Janet Ranganathan that the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, the gold standard for corporate GHG emissions reporting, lacked an explicit tie-in to the climate science – in particular, the threshold of the carbon budget. Ranganathan invited Baue to meet with her and GHG Protocol Global Director Pankaj Bhatia in Washington, DC that summer, followed by Baue continuing, to confer with them as they explored whether to revise the GHG Protocol, which they ultimately decided was too complex, so they set about considering other options.

In the summer of 2013, WRI hosted a meeting with Baue, SCG Co-Founder Mark McElroy, Nigel Topping of CDP (at the time – now High Level Champion for Climate Action at COP26), Marty Spitzer of WWF, and John Sottong of EPA (now with WRI) that resulted in agreement to launch what became the Science Based Targets initiative. Baue and McElroy have served on SBTi’s Technical Advisory Group ever since its founding.Going forward, the Susty Context Group will continue to conduct advocacy to support more robust application of thresholds & allocations, in support of the Sustainability Context Principle, under the auspices of r3.0.