Climate Disclosure Standards Board is a NGO of major accounting firms, business groups and environmental organizations that studies how to account for carbon usage and climate change initiatives on financial reports and statements.

Climate Disclosure Standards Board (CDSB) website                       http://www.cdsb-global.org/

CDSB Reporting Framework                                                                     http://www.cdsb-global.org/uploads/pdf/CDSB_Reporting_Framework.pdf

From the report’s introduction:

CSDB is a consortium of business and environmental organizations formed for the purpose of jointly advocating a generally-accepted international framework for companies to disclose information about climate change-related risks and opportunities, carbon footprints, carbon reduction strategies, and their implications for shareholder value.

This Exposure Draft offers CDSB’s proposed Reporting Framework for public consultation. The Framework is designed on a principles-based model which aims to find the right balance between rules and principles, thus allowing flexibility for judgment to be exercised by management on those aspects of climate change they consider most likely to affect the economic performance and prospects of their company. The principles-based model also allows for management’s view to be balanced against the demand by users of information for greater consistency of disclosure. Whereas many initiatives that collect information about climate change focus on the essential matter of what should be reported, CDSB also focuses on how reporting can provide investors with information that is more useful to their decision making, (“decision-useful” information), by aligning its proposed Reporting Framework to existing relevant principles and objectives of financial reporting. In the process of continuous improvement that characterizes principles-based frameworks, CDSB aims to work toward the position reflected in its proposed Reporting Framework where decision-useful climate change-related disclosure is made in mainstream financial reports.

CDSB’s objectives are to:

• Respond to the demand for information about how climate change affects or is likely to affect the economic performance and prospects of companies;

• Elicit disclosures in mainstream financial reports that can be integrated into investor analyses for the enhanced efficiency of capital allocation;

• Provide business with greater certainty on how to respond to demands for information about climate change;

• Align the needs of information preparers and investors by connecting financial and non-financial business reporting through a focus on how climate change affects value creation;

• Harmonize corporate climate change-related disclosure to form the common approach that is necessary for comparability and for the implementation of policies under discussion through the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations; and

• Provide conceptual and practical input into deliberations by regulatory agencies contemplating the introduction or development of requirements on corporate climate change-related disclosure.