Paul Dickinson is the founder and strategic advisor of the CDP, a platform that has the goal of creating a global economic system that operates within sustainable environmental limits and prevents dangerous climate change. The CDP represents institutional investors with assets exceeding 130 trillion US Dollars and utilises this influence to encourage companies to disclose and manage their environmental impact.

We had the chance to speak with Paul Dickinson during Workiva Amplify EMEA in Amsterdam – Amplify is a global conference organised by Workiva that unites thousands of passionate accounting, finance, ESG, audit and risk professionals. As the world’s leading cloud platform for assured integrated reporting, Workiva brings together financial reporting, Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC), & Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) data together in a controlled, secure, audit-ready platform. This interview with Workiva advisor Paul Dickinson discusses the necessity of a global reporting system.

Amplify is a global conference organised by Workiva

How did you get in your business area?

The main reason for starting CDP was, to recognize that governments alone would not be effective in responding to climate change. And that maybe the most important organisations are the corporations and the big financial institutions. I’m interested in the role of corporations in society and the eventually positive role corporations can have. The overarching concept behind CDP was to enlist the support of 35 prominent investors to request greenhouse gas emissions data and climate change strategies from 500 of the largest companies globally in 2002.

Sounds quite ambitious. How did you get in contact with the big companies?

Paul Dickinson is the founder and strategic advisor of the Carbon Disclosure Project Now called just CDP. He founded CDP in 2000 with the goal of creating a global economic system that operates within sustainable environmental limits and prevents dangerous climate change. CDP represents institutional investors with over $130 trillion in assets and uses this authority to urge companies to disclose and manage their environmental impact. Additionally, the CDP represents the purchasing power of over 200 companies with a total purchasing volume of over $5 trillion US-Dollar. In response to this financial authority, in 2023, more than 23,000 large companies, representing more than 60% of global market capitalization, disclosed climate change data and other environmental information on water security, deforestation and biodiversity through the CDP. There are also more than 1,000 major cities, states and regions that have disclosed their data.
This makes the CDP platform one of the richest sources of information in the world on how companies and governments are driving environmental change. The CDP data is purchased by Bloomberg, FTSE, MSCI, Moody’s and many other financial services providers, as well as by academics and non-governmental organizations.

Well, we corresponded with the chair of the board, who is a publicly known individual. The first line read in 2002 as follows: „Representing investors of 4 trillion US-Dollars, we would like to have information on…. “In our first year 245 of the companies responded and some of those companies will be reporting this year for the 22nd year in a row. In 2023, which is the last complete year, 23.000 companies have responded, representing approximately 60 percent of the global economy.

Our experience indicates that investors are better positioned to make informed decisions when they have access to information on climate strategy. Each year we are representing an increasing number of investors, and since 2007, we have also been representing an increasing number of purchasing organisations. We represent companies with an annual purchasing power of 5 trillion US Dollars. The 23.000 companies report either to their investors or to their customers. I think, the key objective is to enhance the value of corporate evaluation. For example, I say to people in our supply chain program: who pays your suppliers energy bill? You pay it. So, it is legitimate, to consider your entire value chain. And how to generate profits from well-informed decisions.

Is data collected automatically?

CDP is a reporting platform and through which companies report information to us. We do not have enterprise software capabilities.  However, software such as Workiva – of which I am an advisor – can assist companies in the collection of information.

Have the questions, companies must fill in, changed a lot over the past 20 years?

There has been a huge change. We asked information, companies responded, and we gave the information to investors. And then they started to ask if we could add other questions. Over the past 22 years of reporting, we were evolving and improving questions. I call it „our regulatory impact assessment.”

What is the trickiest part of the platform?

Sometimes companies say that CDP asks too many questions, some other companies say CDP asks too few questions. There is always a challenge with reporting, which is to identify an optimal approach.  And we continually search for that optimal point. The environment, in which we are operating, has also changed.  14 years ago, the focus was on water security, then we started asking about deforestation, more recently we have started to ask about biodiversity. We also ask questions about plastics: A well-functioning disclosure system, such as that proposed by CDP, should evolve in parallel with societal development.

Is CDP more focussed on the Anglo-Saxon area?

CDP started its operations as a global organisation. In 2002, the United States was the country that provided the greatest number of responses, and still is, while today China is the second-largest contributor. It is very important to us, that we represent the goals of the United Nations. The leading economies of the world are the most likely to respond.

Are the questions different because every country has its own regulations?

No, we provide a unified global information system. The questions are the same in China, USA or South Africa.

You said, CDP is a not-profit organisation. How do you earn money?

The public can download a limited number of the reports for free, but we also sell the reports to Bloomberg, Moody’s etc. All the financial information brokers use CDP. Subsequently, they enhance its value. But this is not our business. We sometimes say: we are the miners, not the jewellers. We want to create data in its raw form, which can then be utilised by the global community. We are a non-commercial organisation. The first seven years we were philanthropically funded. Then we started to offer partnerships and started to charge for the supply chain programme, and we have a range of other services now. So, our global commercial revenues are over 50 million Dollars, and some private companies pay us to report.

What about the so-called reporting fatigue?

Our platform is designed to stop reporting fatigue.  It is our founding principle: the creation of a single, unified document that can be used in a many of ways. You report to your regulator which may then reuse the data. We believe reporting fatigue supports CDP, because when you respond our questions for instance on climate change you will not need to change your response provided to another entity. Write once, use many times, is our vision.

Paul, thank you for your inspiring answers!