Our track record of reframing the conversation around sustainability and pushing for systematic risk disclosure dates back to our founding, when a group of socially responsible investors, public pension funds, and major environmental organizations created the Ceres Principles, a ten-point code of environmental conduct for forward-looking companies that commit to continuous environmental improvement.

We launched the Global Reporting Initiative, creator of the first global sustainability reporting standards, now used by tens of thousands of companies worldwide.

Ceres and a group of fourteen institutional investors from around the world released the first statement on the disclosure that investors expect from companies: the Global Framework for Climate Risk Disclosure.

We co-founded the Climate Disclosure Standards Board (CDSB), an international consortium that works to align the mainstream corporate reporting model to equate natural capital with financial capital by creating a framework for reporting environmental information with the same rigor as financial information.

We rallied investors to petition the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to issue the first-ever disclosure guidance for financial reporting of material climate-related risks. The number of S&P 500 companies mentioning climate change/greenhouse gas emissions in the annual reports on Form 10-K doubled within one year of the guidance’s issuance.

We developed the Investor Listing Standards Proposal, providing recommendations for integrating sustainability disclosure requirements into listing standards for companies traded on U.S. and global stock exchanges. The aim was to engage exchanges via the World Federation of Exchanges (WFE), which led WFE to launch recommendations for exchanges and issuers on enhancing their work on sustainability.

Building on the baseline of climate risk reporting created by Ceres, GRI, the CDSB, and other leading organizations, the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) is founded. The TCFD develops global recommendations for climate-related financial risk disclosures for use by companies in providing information to lenders, insurers, investors and other stakeholders.

In the Global Investor Statement, more than 500 investors representing nearly $40 trillion in assets under management called for governments around the world to strengthen climate disclosure standards, including through mandatory reporting.

In response to the SEC’s climate disclosure rule proposal, Ceres filed a comment letter supporting the rule and also analyzed comment letters from 320 institutional investors, representing over $50 trillion assets under management. The analysis found 100% support for disclosures aligned with the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures.

A poll sponsored by Ceres and Public Citizen, in partnership with Just Capital and SSRS, found that 87% of Americans are in favor of climate risk disclosure by public corporations.

We rallied corporate and investor support that led California’s governor to sign landmark legislation requiring climate risk and emissions disclosure for thousands of companies. We also supported the finalization of the climate disclosure standard by the International Financial Reporting Standards’ International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB).

After more than two decades of work by Ceres and investors, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) adopted a rule to mandate that publicly listed companies disclose their climate-related financial risk. In connection with lawsuits challenging the SEC’s rule, Ceres organizes the filing of two amicus curiae briefs, one from investors and one from issuer organizations, in support of the SEC.

Ceres submitted a comment letter in response to the California Air Resources Board's (CARB) solicitation for information on implementation of California's landmark climate disclosure laws, in which Ceres summarizes the views of more than 100 climate and financial reporting practitioners representing over 70 companies, trade associations, and institutional investors . Ceres later produced an analysis of all comments submitted to the California Air Resources Board as the agency develops regulations for the landmark climate disclosure laws.