The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Carbon Disclosure Project to deepen their partnership for advancing corporate disclosure on material sustainability issues.
The Climate Disclosure Standards Board, a special project of the CDP’s that is dedicated to integrating climate change-related disclosure into mainstream corporate reporting, will play a key role in the groups’ working relationship.
The memorandum of understanding was signed by SASB founder and executive director Dr. Jean Rogers and CDP chief innovation officer Nigel Topping, and outlines cooperation for an initial period of three years. The purpose of the MOU is to promote greater understanding, visibility and support for the development of disclosure standards for climate change-related and sustainability issues. Under the MOU, SASB will utilize CDP’s data as evidence for determining the materiality of climate change-related issues in more than 80 industries. SASB will also receive technical assistance in referencing CDSB's Climate Change Reporting Framework for disclosure of climate change-related information. CDSB will in turn reference standards developed by SASB.
“Both SASB and CDSB are concerned with providing investors information to assess how climate change affects the strategy, performance and prospects of companies,” Rogers said in a statement. “Our partnership will accelerate our collective work to benefit corporations and investors in understanding material risks and opportunities associated with climate change.”
SASB is developing sustainability accounting standards for more than 80 industries that are designed for disclosure in annual filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The CDSB maintains the Climate Change Reporting Framework, which helps companies incorporate climate change-related information in their financial reports.
“Having pioneered the development of natural capital reporting practices over the last twelve years, CDP has seen a rapid increase in demand for disclosure of material environmental data and industry-specific performance indicators,” said Topping. “We welcome SASB’s work which will go a long way to satisfying that demand and to providing more relevant, material and comparable information to investors and others.”
