Al Gore Keynote Speaker At Dutch Summit

"The full spectrum of value that represents a corporation's activities can only be understood if you look outside the narrow confines of financial reports," he told a conference in Amsterdam.

Gore was the keynote speaker at the conference, where an international standards committee unveiled new guidelines for companies on how to report their "sustainability."

Sustainability was once derided in the corporate world as an amorphous term coined by the environmentalist movement, but it is gradually gaining acceptance in boardrooms.

Most large companies now file a sustainability report - also known as a social report - examining how employees, customers, and others may be affected by their business in the long term.

The new guidelines were released Thursday in Amsterdam, where the Global Reporting Initiative's secretariat is based.