December marks the five-year anniversary of the Paris Agreement — a turning point for the movement to limit dangerous climate change and environmental destruction. But that is not the only pivotal milestone we should commemorate this month.
In December 2015, as a response to increasingly frequent environmental disasters that disrupted ecosystems and human health — plus caused unforeseen business losses and jeopardized assets and infrastructure — the Financial Stability Boardlaunched the Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD).
These leaders understood the direct linkage between climate change and financial risk. They knew the world needed a clear picture of these risks, as well as of the opportunities presented by corporate sustainability action, in order to ensure long-term profitability — especially in a world with a precariously changing climate. They recognized that without reliable climate-related financial information, assets could be mispriced and capital could be misallocated, meaning the global economy potentially could face a tumultuous transition to a low-carbon future.
So, the TCFD was born.
Two years later in 2017, the group introduced its official recommendations for corporate financial disclosures. To support the TCFD and the companies committed to meeting its suggested actions, CDP redesigned its own climate change questionnaire in 2018 to align with the recommendations. This streamlined the reporting process for disclosing companies, providing them with ready-to-go material climate and natural capital disclosures that can be used for their annual reports. It also standardized decision-useful information for the financial community.
TCFD的建议已经对催化对气候变化的陆地行动施加巨大影响。727家公司总部设在美国和加拿大的美国和加拿大，于2020年披露于CDP：
- 47 have validated ambitious science-based targets (up 260 percent from 2018) and 457 have set absolute and/or intensity emissions reduction targets overall;
- 372公开了范围1，范围2和范围3排放;
- 655 are implementing board-level oversight of environmental issues;
- 547 are using climate-related scenario analysis or plan to do so within the next two years; and
- 657确定了与影响其组织战略和/或金融规划的气候相关风险和机会 - 而276则为结果制定了低碳过渡计划。
Investors are responding positively to this streamlining of environmental-financial disclosure. In its latest status report, the TCFD notes thatinvestor support for its recommendations grew by 85 percentfrom 2018 to 2019. Many investors use this TCFD-aligned data generated by CDP disclosures to assess which companies are best positioned in a climate-constrained future and to mitigate financial risk within their portfolios — exactly what the TCFD’s members first envisioned when they began their work five years ago.
But, five years after its birth, the TCFD’s work is not done. More robust disclosure — both in quantity and quality — is needed. Investors cannot make apples-to-apples comparisons on sustainability information if companies do not report their data within a common framework. Companies that choose to solely provide TCFD-related information via standalone reports end up doing themselves a disservice for this reason.
披露还可以防止热带。CDP等标准化框架使投资者明确成为批判性气候行动公司 - 并且不行的。
Disclosure puts companies a step ahead of likely mandatory disclosure regulation. Earlier this year, we saw theCanadian government announcethat companies seeking COVID-19 relief must disclose their environmental impacts based on TCFD guidelines. More recently, the U.K. government announced that all companies must be TCFD-compliant by 2025. Most countries,including the bulk of the G20, already have implemented some form of mandatory corporate climate impact reporting.
幸运的是，TCFD对齐的披露是将其主流化的。公司了解与金融决策者分享这一重要信息的明确业务优势。我们达到了临界质量。
We should celebrate this progress, the above stats from the 2020 corporate climate disclosures and the many other signals that environmental transparency and action are a business norm.
But we should also mark the five-year anniversary of the TCFD’s initiation with a call to action: Now is the time for all companies to join this growing movement.
污染中毒communities from Louisiana to Beijing, forest fires blazing across the West Coast and states along the Gulf of Mexico still reeling after the destruction of Hurricanes Laura and Delta — among countless other environmental disasters wreaking havoc on lives and livelihoods — companies that are not disclosing simply have no excuse at this point.
气候变化的损失在美国和世界其他地方在这里恶化。当我们抓住其影响和推进已知的解决方案时，TCFD指南就应该对公司和投资者的关注提供了关键的指导，以最大限度地减少风险，加速进展和获得低碳转型的益处。
The TCFD has designed the roadmap. Now companies must forge the path.
