Climate Disclosure Standards Board Framework

The Climate Disclosure Standards Board (CDSB) framework for reporting environmental information is an important framework that aims to standardize and ensure relevancy of environmental information in mainstream reporting. This framework has included elements from a variety of different standards like those from the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC), the Sustainability Accountability Standards Board (SASB), and many others allowing for connection to more detailed specifications and alignment of other reporting requirements (Climate Disclosure Standards Board 2019, 9).

Since this reporting framework is heavily focused on environmental information, the framework does a great job at providing useful and effective information regarding ecological capital. The CDSB framework has a variety of principles that align with the IIRC’s integrated reporting structure but also stands out regarding environmental aspects with its first principle of ensuring that environmental information is relevant and material (Climate Disclosure Standards Board 2019, 11). This focus on material environmental information ensures that it is leadership, investors, and various other stakeholders as well.

While this reporting has strong elements in environmental aspects that tie to stakeholders and governance, it provides very little support to ethics and integrity elements. While the framework does lay out a number of principles and requirements for ensuring ethics and integrity are utilized in providing environmental information, no mention is provided for how a corporate acts with ethics and integrity to both employees or communities. The very narrow environmental focus of this reporting allows the CDSB framework to be very useful in providing material environmental information in reporting, however, this narrow focus also excludes many other important elements to comprehensive integrated reporting. This framework can be a useful and effective tool for improved integrated reporting but should not be relied on for all the necessary aspects of integrated reporting.

Author: Logan Callen

Reference

Climate Disclosure Standards Board. 2019. CDSB Framework for Reporting Environmental & Climate Change Information: Advancing and Aligning Disclosure of Environmental Information in Mainstream Reports. Accessed October 20, 2020. http://www.cdsb.net/framework.