Some 746 financial institutions with $136trn in assets have written a letter to more than 15,000 companies around the world calling on them to disclose data on their environmental impact.
In its annual call to companies, global non-profit CDP has rallied an additional 60-odd asset managers, asset owners, banks and insurers since last year to highlight the urgent need for companies to engage in environmental reporting.
This year, the letter, which has been sent to the likes of Exxon Mobil, Saudi Aramco and Tesla, is also requesting disclosure on plastic through CDP’s 2023 questionnaire.
CDP has also decided to incorporate the ISSB’s Climate-related Disclosures Standards into its disclosure platform, which Richard Manley, chief sustainability officer, managing director and head of sustainable investing at Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, commended in the face of growing regulatory requirements.
“This will further support the momentum towards globally recognised sustainability-related disclosure standards that are important to informing capital allocation decisions by investors,” he said.
Paul Dickinson, founder chair of CDP, added “regulation is coming”.
“Disclosure is already mandatory or soon to become so in most major economies including the UK, EU, Brazil, Japan, and the US. Companies still lagging behind are simply out of touch with market reality and are overestimating their own resilience. They must act now to get ahead of governments and market regulations, and to future-proof their operations,” he said.
In 2023, companies will also be able to disclose their activities under the EU taxonomy, through a set of pilot questions.
In January, a report by the non-profit found companies were more than twice as likely to report environmental impact data when directly engaged by institutional investors compared with a control group. Last year’s disclosures reached a record 18,700 – a 38% increase from the year before, CDP noted.