The Carbon Disclosure Forum provided Asian corporates with an introduction to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) and to how investors are increasingly gauging corporate response to climate change by their participation in CDP.
 
CDP, a collaboration of 385 institutional investors, has issued its 2008 information request to the world’s largest corporations. This asks companies to measure and disclose their greenhouse gas emissions and report on their strategy for dealing with risks and opportunities associated with climate change. This year CDP has requested information from over 3,000 companies, up from 2,400 in 2007. It has launched operations in five new geographies and widened its scope in many existing regions. In 2008 it is expected that up to 430 Asian companies ex-Japan are to be surveyed, up from 166 in 2007, including the top 100 companies in China, 200 in India and 50 in Korea . ASrIA compiled a report on the 2007 Asian sample, see below, and will compile a similar report on the 2008 sample.
 
Several key speakers participated in the forum which was held in Hong Kong and Beijing. Sue Howells provided an overview of the CDP, how it has developed over the past five years, and how the numbers of respondents have increased ten-fold over this period. She also introduced a new initiative for the coming year, whereby a number of leading brand names will be passing CDP questionnaires to their supply chain manufacturers. Melissa Brown explained the investor perspective on CDP with emphasis on how investors use and respond to the data. In particular she noted that investors would focus on evidence that corporates are responding strategically to CDP issues relevant to their sectors, both in terms of risk and opportunity. ERM representatives Lee Solsbery in Hong Kong and Doug Smith in Beijing provided a range of technical advice and suggestions on how companies could respond on the issues.
 
Carbon Disclosure Project Report 2007 — Asia ex-Japan is available on: http://www.asria.org/publications#CDP