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We all know that climate change is a critical topic for all of us. COP27 couldn’t be clearer on this. But organizations are having to learn how to report and manage their impact and influence on the planet, and this can be a complex process to manage.

A key part of reporting and managing climate change is to have a shared taxonomy so that you, your regulators, your suppliers, and your customers all understand your impact.

Sadly, in the case of climate change, that is not as simple as it would be in an ideal world because across the globe, regulators and governments have implemented a bewildering range of regulations, standards, frameworks and laws.

This means it can be difficult to be confident that everyone is speaking the same language.

To help overcome this, Solidatus is a contributing partner to the Open-Source Sustainable Finance Taxonomy Project.

The aim of this initiative is to create a global, open-source and available-to-all resource that holds global taxonomies that will allow all organizations to improve the understanding of the requirement to help standardize the language used in climate change.

Launched last month in Dublin, this resource is now available on GitHub to any organization wishing to understand a wide range of climate change and sustainable finance taxonomies, including ISSB accounting standards, the SFDR and TCFD frameworks, and a host of other key taxonomies such as NACE and NAICS industry categorizations. This resource will grow over time and includes cross-mappings between the key taxonomies.

Each of these taxonomies are available as downloadable text files and in addition represented as Solidatus models which allow users to visually:

  • Understand the structure in each taxonomy
  • Understand the relationships between different taxonomies
  • Focus in on the similarities, overlaps and differences between key taxonomies

These visualizations are available to view for all users. However, Solidatus clients can also download these models and import them within their Solidatus instance as a reusable resource and a key component in linking the taxonomies with their internal business processes.

This approach will deliver a platform to demonstrate to regulators and auditors how you are meeting climate change reporting requirements.

The links to these taxonomies are below.

Please contact Solidatus at hello@solidatus.com if you want to know how to best use them within your organization.

Organizations that wish to get involved in the open-source Sustainable Finance Taxonomy project can do so via the partner page on the GitHub site (link below). The more partners we have involved, the more valuable this shared resource will be.

Solidatus are proud to be doing its part in the fight against climate change by being a founding member of the First Global Project for Open-Source Sustainable Finance Taxonomy (‘OS-SFT’), and we forward to working with you on this in the future.

OS SFT model

Screenshot of the relationship between TCFD, EBA Pillar 3 and ISSB, highlighting the added value of linking topics across these taxonomies within Solidatus

Further reading

Open-Source Sustainable Finance Taxonomy
According to its GitHub page, the “objective of the project is to provide the marketplace with the following open-source, practical tools to advance user implementation of sustainable finance data systems into business operating models for new and evolving taxonomy frameworks, standards, regulations and laws”.

See https://github.com/FD-SustainableFinance/0-OS-SFT-OVERVIEW.

Open-Source Sustainable Finance Taxonomy Partner
See https://github.com/FD-SustainableFinance/06-COLLABORATORS-PARTNERS.

UN Climate Change report
See https://unfccc.int/news/climate-plans-remain-insufficient-more-ambitious-action-needed-now

Written by: Philip Dutton

Co-Founder & CEO at Solidatus
Philip is a Senior System Architect and Project Manager with over 20 years’ experience within Financial Services.