Assurance

For our 2005/6 and 2006/7 reports, and again for this current report, Ford has sought input from an external stakeholder committee convened by Ceres as a way to ensure the report's thoroughness, transparency and utility. The committee reviewing this report met twice: once to review and comment on the report outline, and once to review and comment on a nearly final draft of the report. Both meetings were held via teleconference. This report reflects our response to several suggestions of the stakeholder committee, notably the publication of our CO2 reduction target and a detailed roadmap for achieving it.

Some of the data in our reports have been subject to various forms of internal and third-party verification. We have explored but not yet pursued third-party verification of all of the data in the report. We are also exploring efficient ways to expand the range of data that are subject to verification.

Ford's 2002 through 2005/6 reports were produced "in accordance" with the 2002 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). In 2006, the GRI issued updated guidelines, called G3. Ford supported and participated in the development of the process that produced the updated guidelines. Ford's 2006/7 report was aligned with the G3 guidelines at an application level of A+, the "A" being the most comprehensive level of reporting and the "+" indicating that the report has received external assurance.

Since the publication of the 2006/7 report, we have learned more about the rapidly evolving field of sustainability report assurance and GRI's expectations for assurance processes that qualify for a "+". We are not declaring the current report to be third-party assured and, based on our improved understanding, would not have done so for the 2006/7 report. We are declaring this report to be at an "A" level of reporting.