As world leaders meet in Glasgow for COP26, the UN global summit to address the critical and urgent issue of climate change, the IFRS Foundation Trustees (Trustees) announce three significant developments to provide the global financial markets with high-quality disclosures on climate and other sustainability issues:
- The formation of a new International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) to develop—in the public interest—a comprehensive global baseline of high-quality sustainability disclosure standards to meet investors’ information needs;
- A commitment by leading investor-focused sustainability disclosure organisations to consolidate into the new board. The IFRS Foundation will complete consolidation of the Climate Disclosure Standards Board (CDSB—an initiative of CDP) and the Value Reporting Foundation (VRF—which houses the Integrated Reporting Framework and the SASB Standards) by June 2022;
- The publication of prototype climate and general disclosure requirements developed by the Technical Readiness Working Group (TRWG), a group formed by the IFRS Foundation Trustees to undertake preparatory work for the ISSB. These prototypes are the result of six months of joint work by representatives of the CDSB, the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), the Financial Stability Board’s Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), the VRF and the World Economic Forum (Forum), supported by the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) and its Technical Expert Group of securities regulators. The TRWG has consolidated key aspects of these organisations’ content into an enhanced, unified set of recommendations for consideration by the ISSB.
We have already written about this as an expected next step from IFRS in a previous article and will follow the developments in the future.
Source: ifrs.org
Cover picture: depositphotos.com