Evidence
Evidence
Evidence that shows its work.
A useful claim carries its source, date, geography, method, rights, confidence, limitations, version, and status. GDR is designed to keep that context attached as evidence informs indicators and decisions.
Method review
Scores are withheld while we refine the method.
GDR scores and rankings have been removed from this preview. Indicator definitions and source references remain available for review.
Evidence states
Absence and uncertainty are part of the account.
Observed
Directly observed or measured evidence.
Modeled
Derived or estimated evidence whose assumptions must be visible.
Community-grounded
Evidence contributed through accountable local or lived knowledge processes.
Proposed
A candidate measure, source, interpretation, or intervention that has not been adopted.
Missing
Evidence expected for the question but not available.
Verification and assurance
A score that is self-reported and never independently checked cannot do this work.
Financial statements have auditors. Carbon credits have validation and verification bodies. Sustainability disclosure under the EU's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive requires third-party assurance. Not every account can or should be held to the same evidentiary standard, so three tiers are proposed, deliberately parallel to the self-reported, verified and audited tiers that carbon markets and disclosure regimes have already converged on.
Tier 1: Self-reported
Computed by the reporting entity from its own data, using the published method, with every input, goalpost and imputation disclosed. This is the minimum bar for publication: an unaudited account is still more informative than none, provided its provenance is shown rather than asserted. It carries no assurance opinion and may not be presented as though it did.
Tier 2: Third-party verified
An accredited verifier gives an opinion on the inputs and the calculation without independently sourcing the underlying data. The conclusion takes the negative form used in limited assurance: nothing has come to the verifier's attention to indicate the account is materially misstated. The verifier checks that goalposts match the published tables, that the arithmetic is correctly applied, and that every imputed cell is flagged.
Tier 3: Independently computed
A verifier sources the underlying indicator data independently, computes from that data, and reconciles any divergence from the entity's own figure. This is the two-stage validation-then-verification model carbon markets use. Anything used to price an instrument should carry this tier; a municipal pilot published for transparency can reasonably start at Tier 1.
What the assurance model does not settle
Three questions are left open rather than answered by assertion.
Accreditation, meaning who accredits verifiers and against what competence standard, is a governance decision rather than a methodological one. Liability, meaning what a verifier is exposed to if an independently computed opinion later proves wrong, is a legal question this work is not positioned to settle. Cost is the third: third-party verification is not free, and the nations and organizations with the most to gain from a credible account are not always the ones best positioned to pay for one. Leaving these open is a deliberate choice. Pretending to settle questions of professional accreditation and liability law would be a worse failure than naming them as unresolved.
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Current evidence
Inspect the record behind the claim.
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