From Sustainability Explorer , you can browse content from multiple frameworks, standards, and questionnaires to identify material disclosures for environmental, social, and governance (ESG) or sustainability reporting:
- CDP (formerly Carbon Disclosure Project)
- S&P Global Corporate Sustainability Assessment (CSA)
- Sustainability-related sections of the Electronic Code of Federal Regulations (eCFR)
- European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS)
- Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)
- International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), also known as the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) Standards
- Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB)
- Task Force for Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD)
- United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDG)
To browse only relevant guidance, you can select the content applicable to your organization's sustainability reporting from the Properties panel.
Tip: Your organization may need multiple frameworks and standards to report its disclosures. For example, since TCFD focuses on environmental issues, you may use additional frameworks for social and governance disclosures.
CDP is a nonprofit organization that uses responses to its annual questionnaires to score companies based on their environmental transparency and action. These scores help:
- Inform investor decisions
- Provide benchmarks to compare to peers
- Ensure strategies align with current best practices
To use CDP 2025 questionnaire content in Sustainability Explorer, select 2025 CDP from the Properties panel.
To learn more, view Explore 2025 CDP questionnaire for sustainability reporting.
Tip: From the Properties panel, you can also include content from 2024 or 2023 CDP questionnaires for historical reference. In Frameworks, select 2024 CDP or which 2023 questionnaires to include — Climate, Forests, or Water.
S&P Global CSA is an annual evaluation of companies' sustainability practices. With CSA, you can benchmark your company's performance on industry-specific economic, environmental, and social criteria. It also enables you to leverage the expertise, methodology, and database underlying the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices (DJSI) for your own internal processes and external communication.
To view CSA questions in Sustainability Explorer, select 2025 CSA from the Properties panel.
Note: To enable CSA content, you may need to agree to Workiva's Third Party Terms of Use for material licensed from S&P Global Inc. For details, contact your Workiva Customer Success Manager (CSM).
Note: Sustainability Explorer only represents the questions, which you submit through the CSA portal.
To capture responses to submit to CSA:
- From Sustainability Explorer, add comments to CSA questions to capture discussions with collaborators.
- From Sustainability Program, connect metrics with CSA questions they align with, and collect responses as metric values.
To learn more, view Respond to S&P Global CSA for sustainability reporting.
To help disclose governance factors in United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings, you can enable relevant sections of the Electronic Code of Federal Regulations (eCFR) Title 17 Chapter II in Sustainability Explorer; namely, content of Part 229: Standard Instructions for Filing Forms Under Securities Act of 1933, Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975 — also known as Regulation S-K:
- Subpart 229.100 Business, item 101(c) Description of business
- Subpart 229.407 Management and Certain Security Holders, item 407(c): Corporate governance nominating committee
Tip: Climate-related SEC regulations will become available in Sustainability Explorer when effective and in the eCFR. To help prepare, you can contact your Workiva Customer Success Manager (CSM) to request Program tags to align metrics with those regulations.
To view these regulations in Sustainability Explorer, select ECFR from the Properties panel.
For more information, view Use Regulation S-K of Code of Federal Regulations in Sustainabillity Explorer.
The ESRS help companies in the European Union (EU) — including EU-based subsidiaries of International companies — comply with the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). To enable accurate, consistent, and comparable sustainability reporting, the ESRS provide:
- Cross-cutting standards with general requirements and disclosures that apply to all industries and sectors
- Topical standards with requirements and disclosures for specific factors
Tip: For more information about the ESRS, refer to the European Commission's Q&A.
To view the ESRS in Sustainability Explorer, select ESRS from the Properties panel.
To collect values to disclose for the ESRS, connect Program metrics to the Standards they align with.
Note: Sustainability Explorer provides only the text of the ESRS. For the tables prescribed by application requirements to disclose datapoints, download the ESRS as a portable document file (PDF) from Sustainability Explorer.
Tip: The European Financial Advisory Group (EFRAG) has issued ESRS Implementation Guidance (IG) documents for Materiality Assessment, Value Chain, or Detailed ESRS Datapoints. While this non-authoritative content doesn't appear in Sustainability Explorer, you can download it directly from EFRAG.
GRI is an independent, international organization that helps businesses and other organizations take responsibility for their impacts. To help organizations communicate their impacts, GRI provides a global common language through:
- Universal Standards — such as GRI 1: Foundation 2021, GRI 2: General disclosures 2021, and GRI 3: Material topics 2021 — used by every organization
- Industry-specific Sector Standards, such as GRI 11: Oil and Gas Sector 2021 or GRI 12: Coal Sector 2022
- Additional Topic Standards — such as GRI 200: Economic topics, GRI 300: Environmental topics, and GRI 400: Social topics — to prepare reports for specific purposes or audiences such as for investors or stakeholders
To use GRI Standards in Sustainability Explorer:
- From the Properties panel, select GRI in Frameworks.
- In GRI Sectors, select which Sector Standards to include.
Tip: To not include GRI Sector Standards, select No Sectors.
To help ensure a high-quality, comprehensive global baseline of sustainability disclosures focused on the needs of investors and financial markets, the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) — formed by the International Financial Reporting Reporting Standards (IFRS) Foundation — developed the IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards:
- IFRS S1: General Requirements for Disclosure of Sustainability-related Financial Information
- IFRS S2: Climate-related Disclosures
To use the IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards — also known as the ISSB Standards — in Sustainability Explorer, select IFRS from the Properties panel.
For more information, view Use IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards in Sustainability Explorer.
SASB developed standards—maintained by the Value Reporting Foundation—to help companies disclose material sustainability information to their investors by identifying the disclosures most likely to impact the financial performance of many industries. These standards:
- Are industry-specific, as disclosures' impact on industries' financial performance varies
- Highlight disclosures that help investors make informed decisions
- Are cost-effective for companies to use
- Use an evidence-based and market-informed process like that used to develop standards for financial accounting
Tip: The SASB content includes both the current Standards and the 2023-06 revisions effective for all entities, for annual periods beginning or after January 1, 2024.
To use SASB content in Sustainability Explorer:
- From the Properties panel, select SASB in Frameworks.
- Select which industries apply to your organization.
TCFD is an organization established in 2015 to develop consistent, voluntary, climate-related financial risk disclosures for corporate filings. Per TCFD guidance, effective disclosures:
- Include relevant information, with no irrelevant or redundant details
- Provide specific and complete, with a thorough overview of your organization's exposure to potential climate-related impacts
- Are clear, balanced, and understandable as it communicates financial information that serves the needs of a range of financial stakeholders
- Maintain consistency over time to convey the development or evolution of your organization's impact on climate-related issues
- Enable meaningful comparison among other organizations within your same sector, industry, or portfolio
- Provide reliable, verifiable, and objective information, free from bias
- Are delivered or updated in a timely manner—at least annually within mainstream financial reporting
Tip: While the ISSB will continue the work of TCFD by incorporating its recommendations into the IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards, you can continue to use TCFD, such as to ease the adoption of IFRS.
To use TCFD content in Sustainability Explorer, select TCFD from the Properties panel.
The UNSDG enable cities, NGOs, philanthropies, and individuals to place worldwide goals in the same framework to better share ideas and best practices:
- No poverty
- Zero hunger
- Good health and well-being
- Quality education
- Gender equality
- Clean water and sanitation
- Affordable and clean energy
- Decent work and economic growth
- Industry, innovation, and infrastructure
- Reduced inequalities
- Sustainable cities and communities
- Responsible consumption and production
- Climate action
- Life below water and on land
- Peace, justice, and strong institutions
- Partnerships for the Goals
To use UNSDG content in Sustainability Explorer, select UNSDG from the Properties panel.