Despite the ongoing environmental, social and governance (ESG) backlash, the world’s largest voluntary environmental disclosure platform is seeing “greater uptake than ever” this year.
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CDP’s market director for Asia Pacific (excluding China and Japan) Dennis Wan said that the record interest the non-profit has seen in its current disclosure cycle, which opened in June, suggests that “mere politics, green-hushing and words are not tamping down the recognition that environmental risk is financial risk”.
“To make the right decisions, data is an absolute necessity,” said Wan at the Bloomberg Sustainable Business Summit in Singapore last week.
In response to Eco-Business’ queries, a CDP spokesperson said that the number of companies starting to disclose through its portal is up by almost 50 per cent compared to this time last year, with a 25 per cent increase in disclosures made by state and regional governments. At the summit, Wan shared that over half of the disclosures made by companies to CDP are in Asia.
“This early activity suggests a higher level of engagement compared to last year and a strong signal of momentum across our stakeholder base,” CDP’s spokesperson said.
A record number of firms in Asia Pacific and North America have also been asked to disclose on water and forests, reflecting a rapidly rising demand for nature-related data in financial markets, the spokesperson added.
In particular, Japan – one of Asia Pacific’s top disclosing markets – has seen more companies starting to report on forest and water in the first four weeks of CDP’s 2025 disclosure cycle, as compared to the total number of companies that disclosed against these themes last year.
The spokesperson added that regardless of regulatory rollbacks, more companies in the United States have been asked to disclose critical data this year, compared to in Europe.
While the European Union has historically led in setting ambitious sustainability regulations, it has been accused of watering down some of its key rules, and has delayed the implementation of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) by two years. Its latest proposed changes could slash the number of companies subjected to CSRD reporting by about 85 per cent, according to estimates.
CDP restructure
In May, CDP announced a strategic restructuring to reduce the reporting burden of the over 23,000 companies that it receives disclosures from each year.
It has been reported that the revamp is expected to result in a 20 per cent reduction of CDP’s workforce, which the firm said would save costs and fund improvements to its technology infrastructure. CDP currently employs around 540 people in 15 countries.
Last year, Eco-Business reported that across CDP, several roles in Asia were axed in favour of global functional roles, leading several senior executives in this region to move on.
CDP last revamped its questionnaire in 2024 with the aim of simplifying disclosures against multiple environmental issues by aligning with the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB)’s climate standard.
While the new format faced pushback from some sustainability practitioners for failing to ease disclosure burden as intended, the climate non-profit’s chief executive Sherry Madera had insisted that there are just 450 questions – not over 5,000, as some industry players claimed – in the questionnaire.
Wan told Eco-Business that the questionnaire has remained “largely the same” this year and that CDP has put in a lot more effort into improving the user experience. As a result, it is seeing less complaints, shared Wan.
The deadline for submitting responses to be scored by CDP is 17 September.
According to CDP’s latest assessment, companies in most Asian jurisdictions are leading those elsewhere in the world in terms of readiness to meet ISSB’s climate rules, which has become mandated for many large listed firms in the region.
Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore saw at least 88 per cent of companies responding to a vast majority of questions aligned to ISSB’s climate standard, compared to 83 per cent of companies in the world.
