History & Mission 

“Consistent and comprehensive disclosure frameworks are important to the incentives shareholders provide to corporate managers to deploy capital efficiently. The World Economic Forum is pleased to be part of this ground breaking cooperation to establish a generally accepted corporate carbon disclosure framework that will make life easier for companies and investors. It is a good example of leadership by the private sector and civil society on a critical global challenge." Rick Samans, CDSB Chairman

Mission

CDSB’s mission is to promote and advance climate change-related disclosure in mainstream reports through the development of a global framework for corporate reporting on climate change.

CDSB advances its mission by:

• providing a forum for collaboration on how existing standards and practices can be supported and enhanced so as to link financial and climate change-related reporting and respond to regulatory developments;
• consolidating existing good practice through CDSB’s commitment not to create a new standard but to enhance initiatives that are widely adopted and with which business is already familiar;
• providing resources for preparers and users of climate change-related information and for regulators so as to encourage a more globally harmonized approach to climate change-related reporting.

History

CDSB was founded at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in January 2007. It was convened in response to increasing calls from corporations and financial markets to report climate change-related information in a standardized way across the globe. This would facilitate comparative analysis by investors, managers and the public. It would also help harmonize reporting worldwide, given the varying initiatives and reporting methodologies adopted in different countries to collect climate risk information.

An overview of CDSB’s key milestones to date can be viewed here.

 CDSB’s objectives for 2012 and beyond are to:

• promote use and testing of the Climate Change Reporting Framework by reporting organizations;
• respond to the needs of users of information prepared according to the Climate Change Reporting Framework;
• encourage adoption of the Climate Change Reporting Framework by regulators and standard-setters; and
• continue development of the Climate Change Reporting Framework.