GRI and CDP to Improve Sustainability Reporting Framework Alignment 

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and CDP have announced a new cooperation agreement to enhance collaboration and alignment between their reporting standards and platforms. This initiative aims to simplify sustainability reporting for companies and improve access to data on corporate environmental impacts.

GRI Sustainability Reporting Standards are among the most widely recognized global frameworks for corporate sustainability reporting. Designed to ensure consistent reporting across companies and industries, these standards facilitate clear communication on sustainability issues to a diverse range of stakeholders, including investors. Following a significant update in 2021, GRI recently introduced a new biodiversity reporting standard, enabling companies to disclose their most significant biodiversity impacts and management strategies. Developed by the Global Sustainability Standards Board (GSSB), GRI standards are currently utilized by over 14,000 organizations worldwide.

Investors and other stakeholders can monitor and assess an organization’s performance in important environmental sustainability domains such as climate change, deforestation, water security, and the impact of plastics thanks to CDP’s worldwide environmental disclosure system. More than 23,000 companies disclosed through CDP in 2023, a record and a 24% increase over the previous year. These companies represented over 66% of the global market capitalization, approximately $67 trillion. 

According to the new agreement, which was revealed by the organizations during the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan, the GRI and CDP will collaborate to increase capacity, simplify disclosure for businesses, and make it possible for GRI-aligned data to be reported using the CDP questionnaire. In order to improve operability and better match the CDP questionnaire with the GRI’s future energy and climate requirements as well as its biodiversity and water criteria, the partnership will involve a collaborative mapping exercise.

The agreement represents the most recent in a number of initiatives by both organizations to improve the alignment of their reporting frameworks with other sustainability disclosure standards and systems. These initiatives include the GRI’s own partnerships with the IFRS and EFRAG to enhance interoperability, as well as CDP’s announcement earlier this week that it had achieved interoperability with the EFRAG’s European Sustainability Reporting Standards and its recent alignment with the IFRS’ climate disclosure standard.