The CGP provides a common language such that others can design new standards, accounting practices and certifications more quickly. The language aims to describe any given unit of commodity production. The CGP is not a methodology or assessment framework. It does not define benchmarks, nor specify what constitutes 'good' or 'bad' production practices, nor what constitutes a 'high' or 'low' intensity footprint. For example: there are numerous standards for natural gas production. One, called MiQ, certifies natural gas into six categories graded "A" to "F", based on associated methane release. The best performing certification is grade "A" or "Stringent", with natural gas containing less than 0.05% methane, when measured quarterly. Simlarly "F" is the "mandatory minimum" certificate, for natural gas containing less than 2% methane, measured annually. The CGP does not attempt to redefine these boundary lines. Instead, it works at a higher level. It provides a framework for describing natural gas as having a set of attributes, a subset of which are "greenhouse gas emissions", of which one is called "methane", and acknowledges there are various certification standards. This common language also describes physical attributes (e.g., purity), contextual attributes (e.g., location of origin) alongside such crucial ESG attributes (e.g., water intensity, GHG emissions, labour rights).

We invite contributions that cover for both hard (mined or extractive) and soft (grown) commodities. The description framework is open source and extensible. This means that as the community of contributors grows, the framework will expand to cover more commodiites in greater depth. Initially, the project team is working with partners to create "reference implementations" which will add further depth in certain areas. Please get in touch if you'd like to partner with us.

Initially, the project team is working with partners to create "reference implementations" which will add further depth in certain areas - likely prioritising environmental and selected social impacts. The description framework is open source and extensible, which means that as the community of contributors grows, the framework will expand to cover more atttributes in greater depth.

The CGP draws from the same principles that made the Music Genome the spark that transformed business models in the music industry. Information about music (metadata, “emotive” attributes, etc.), combined with the actual music in a single format, enabled a standardized classification system. This provided a common framework for search and discovery mechanisms and later enabled greater scale in tagging of assets via machine learning and AI.

Please start by subscribing to our email updates, via the form at the bottom of the home page. There are then a number of ways you can engage with the project: 1) Adopt in the market: we welcome collaboration with all implementing partners including commodity producers, buyers, standard setters, market makers, and other data infrastructure initiatives. 2) Contribute to the CGP description framework: we’re looking for conceptual, technical and strategic contributors to share their feedback on v1.0. 3) Financial support: for our next phase of growth, we need donors to support for our thriving community.

We are in conversations with donors to fund the next phase of the project. The initial effort was supported pro-bono by the UNFCCC Climate Champions, Context Labs, and Xpansiv. It is housed at One Earth, a 501(c)(3) not for profit organisation focused on addressing climate change.

The description framework is available to use free of charge.