What is CDP?

CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project) is a global environmental disclosure platform. Once a year, companies fill out structured questionnaires on climate, water and forests. The data is scored and shared with investors, customers and regulators.

Scale

CDP is the largest dataset of its kind:

• 24,800+ companies report through the platform (2025), representing two-thirds of global market capitalisation.
• Investors with over $130T in assets under management use CDP responses in their decisions.
• Major buyers — Walmart, Microsoft, L’Oréal, Unilever — require CDP from their suppliers.

Voluntary, but effectively required

CDP participation is technically voluntary. In practice, it isn’t:

• If a large customer requests CDP via their supply chain program, declining is a commercial risk.
• If an investor screens portfolios using CDP scores, your absence shows up.
• If competitors in your sector are A-listed, your gap is visible.

The result: most mid-to-large companies in commodity-intensive sectors end up participating, regardless of legal mandate.

The three questionnaires

CDP runs three separate disclosure streams. You fill out the ones relevant to your business:

Questionnaire	Covers	Typical respondents
Climate Change	Scope 1/2/3 emissions, risks, targets, governance	~80% of CDP respondents — all sectors
Water Security	Withdrawal, consumption, discharge, basin risk	Food & bev, pharma, textile, mining, semiconductors
Forests	Risk commodity supply chain (palm, soy, timber, cattle, rubber, cocoa, coffee)	Companies whose supply chains touch the 7 commodities

In 2026 CDP also embedded a Plastics module inside Climate.

Who uses the data

Stakeholder	Why they look
Institutional investors	Portfolio risk screening, ESG integration
Large buyers	Supplier qualification (CDP Supply Chain program)
Regulators	Benchmark progress against sector standards
Civil society / analysts	Track corporate environmental performance

What it isn’t

CDP is not an ISO-style certification. There’s no auditor signing off that you met a standard — there’s a published questionnaire response and a score (A → F) issued by CDP based on what you disclosed and how completely.

Treat CDP as a continuous data discipline rather than an annual form-fill. Companies that build environmental data architecture once and reuse it across CDP, CSRD, EcoVadis, EINF and ISO 14001 spend less and score better.