Sustainable Data Alliance launches at WEF
Last week an alliance of leading stakeholders launched the ‘Future of Sustainable Data Alliance’ at the World Economic Forum.
Bringing together the World Economic Forum, United Nations, the Climate Bonds Initiative, Tsinghua University, the Bank of Africa, Refitniv, and many others. This global alliance aims to accelerate the allocation of capital into sustainable investments via better environmental, social and governance (ESG) data.
The Alliance calls for standardisation to ensure better quality and more widely available data that can be easily analysed – they aim to ‘make ESG more of a science than an art’, said the CEO of Refinitiv, David Craig.
A laudable aim – however, while we wholeheartedly agree that access to high quality data on environmental factors and climate-change risk is essential for facilitating sustainable investment, the answer is not necessarily adding to the already existing array of overlapping ESG frameworks.
To achieve quality, usable ESG data the reporting process needs to be simplified and standardised, with a clear, usable taxonomy to ensure comparability. While some great work has been done to align ESG frameworks, to get the most usable data, disclosures that meet those frameworks should be structured, digital and in XBRL.
Read more here.
