CDI Taxonomy Overview

1. Purpose

This document provides an overview of the Canonical Disclosure Intent (CDI) taxonomy structure for CDI v1.

The CDI taxonomy defines stable, framework-independent disclosure intents that capture the semantic meaning of commonly requested sustainability information across global reporting architectures.

The taxonomy is designed to support structural interoperability with major sustainability ecosystems, including:

  • ESRS (European Sustainability Reporting Standards)
  • ISSB / IFRS Sustainability Standards
  • GRI Standards (Economic, Environmental, and Social)
  • Other voluntary and regulatory sustainability regimes

Each domain within the CDI taxonomy maintains a dedicated taxonomy document.

This separation enables:

  • independent domain evolution,
  • explicit domain boundaries,
  • controlled extensibility,
  • semantic stability across sustainability topics.

2. Taxonomy Principles

The CDI taxonomy follows these cross-domain principles.

2.1 Independence from Reporting Standards

  • CDIs are independent of any reporting standard or framework.
  • CDIs do not prescribe disclosure obligations.
  • CDIs do not assert completeness or compliance.
  • CDIs do not encode regulatory logic.
  • Framework-specific interpretations are handled exclusively through Canonical Mapping Packs (CMPs).

CDI defines meaning.
CMP defines interpretation.

2.2 Semantic Stability

  • Each CDI represents a single semantic concept.
  • CDI identifiers remain stable across versions unless meaning changes.
  • Deprecated CDIs remain referenceable for historical disclosures.
  • Extensions do not alter the semantic meaning of existing CDIs.
  • Structural expansion must not introduce framework bias.

Semantic stability is prioritised over structural convenience.

2.3 Structural Consistency

Each disclosure intent:

  • has a globally unique identifier,
  • represents a single semantic concept,
  • may be quantitative, narrative, or hybrid,
  • may reference one or more canonical data elements,
  • remains independent of jurisdictional interpretation.

No CDI embeds regulatory, compliance, or materiality logic.

2.4 Sustainability Domain Coverage

The taxonomy is structured to cover four high-level sustainability dimensions:

  • Environmental
  • Social
  • Governance
  • Economic sustainability impacts and performance

This structure enables cross-framework reuse while preserving semantic neutrality.

Coverage does not imply equivalence with any reporting framework.

3. Domain Taxonomies

The CDI v1 taxonomy is structured across four primary sustainability dimensions.

I. Environmental Domains

Climate Taxonomy
Governance, strategy, risks, targets, greenhouse gas emissions, energy interactions, transition planning, and methodology.

→ /cdi/v1/taxonomy/climate

Energy Taxonomy
Energy consumption, sourcing, procurement, intensity, efficiency initiatives, and methodology.

→ /cdi/v1/taxonomy/energy

Water Taxonomy
Water withdrawal, consumption, discharge, sourcing, reuse, contextual risk, and methodology.

→ /cdi/v1/taxonomy/water

Waste Taxonomy
Operational waste generation, classification, treatment pathways, recovery, disposal, and methodology.

→ /cdi/v1/taxonomy/waste

Pollution Taxonomy
Non-greenhouse gas emissions, water pollutants, soil contamination, operational sources, monitoring processes, and incident management.

→ /cdi/v1/taxonomy/pollution

Biodiversity Taxonomy
Organisational interaction with natural systems, land use, ecosystem dependencies, biodiversity management processes, and change over time.

→ /cdi/v1/taxonomy/biodiversity

Materials and Circularity Taxonomy
Material inputs, throughput, recycled materials, resource efficiency, recovery practices, and materials governance.

→ /cdi/v1/taxonomy/materials

II. Social Domains

Workforce Taxonomy
Organisation’s own workforce composition, employment structure, training, health and safety, representation, governance, and methodology.

→ /cdi/v1/taxonomy/workforce

Value Chain Workers Taxonomy
Workers in upstream and downstream value chains, employment conditions, labour practices, health and safety, and management processes.

→ /cdi/v1/taxonomy/value-chain-workers

Affected Communities Taxonomy
Communities impacted by organisational activities, engagement processes, impact identification, and grievance mechanisms.

→ /cdi/v1/taxonomy/affected-communities

Consumers and End-Users Taxonomy
Impacts on consumers or end-users, including product safety, transparency, data protection, accessibility, and complaint mechanisms.

→ /cdi/v1/taxonomy/consumers

III. Governance Domain

Governance Taxonomy
Governance oversight, roles and responsibilities, governance processes, policy structures, ethics frameworks, internal controls, transparency mechanisms, and reporting scope.

→ /cdi/v1/taxonomy/governance

IV. Economic Domain

Economic Sustainability Taxonomy
Economic performance, value creation and distribution, market presence, indirect economic impacts, procurement practices, competition-related disclosures, public policy engagement, and economic transparency.

→ /cdi/v1/taxonomy/economic

This domain enables structured representation of economic sustainability information without embedding financial reporting requirements.

4. Taxonomy Characteristics

Across all domains, the CDI taxonomy exhibits:

  • Framework independence
  • Semantic precision
  • Reusability through CMP
  • Explicit versioning
  • Historical traceability
  • Domain isolation with cross-domain interoperability
  • Regulatory neutrality

CDIs define semantic meaning.
CMPs define framework interpretation.
Jurisdiction CMPs define regulatory alignment.

These responsibilities remain strictly separated.

5. Layered Model Context

Canonical ESG operates through a layered structure:

Layer 1 — Semantic Model
CDI defines disclosure meaning independent of frameworks or law.

Layer 2 — Cross-Framework Interpretation
Topic CMPs interpret CDIs across global standards (e.g., ESRS, ISSB, GRI).

Layer 3 — Jurisdictional Mapping
Jurisdiction CMPs document regulatory alignment for binding regimes.

This layered separation isolates semantic meaning from interpretive and legal change cycles.

6. Freeze Declaration

The CDI v1 taxonomy establishes a stable semantic foundation across Environmental, Social, Governance, and Economic domains.

All domains listed above are designated as frozen under CDI v1.

No additional structural domains will be introduced within CDI v1.

Future structural expansion requires a new major version.

Editorial clarification and minor refinement may occur without altering semantic meaning.

7. Summary

The CDI v1 taxonomy defines a stable semantic vocabulary for modelling sustainability information independently of reporting frameworks or regulatory regimes.

It enables:

  • single-source semantic modelling,
  • multi-framework reuse through CMP,
  • jurisdictional alignment without semantic mutation,
  • cross-domain interoperability,
  • longitudinal stability across regulatory evolution.

The taxonomy defines meaning only.
It does not define obligation, compliance, or adequacy.

CDI Taxonomy Overview
Version: v1.0.0
Status: Frozen
Effective Version: CDI v1