ISSB success also requires action by others
May 18, 2022
On May 18, 2022, the IFRS Foundation’s International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) published a summary of the necessary steps required to establish a comprehensive global baseline of sustainability disclosures.
The announcement highlights that the ISSB’s global baseline presents a unique opportunity to reduce the existing and further fragmentation of sustainability disclosure requirements and that widespread use of the baseline will reduce the costs for data preparers and improve information usability for data users. It also outlines the steps the ISSB has taken, and is taking, to have completed by the end of 2022 the necessary institutional and technical standard-setting work to establish the core elements of the global baseline. Nevertheless, the announcement also stresses that achieving this goal will require actions by others, in particular by jurisdictional authorities and market participants. It states:
Once in place, the future success of the global baseline will depend on combined action by public authorities to incorporate it into their jurisdictional reporting requirements, and market demand through investors and others encouraging use of the ISSB’s IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards. The ISSB reaffirmed its commitment to work collaboratively with jurisdictions and stakeholders in pursuit of this public interest objective and is poised to engage proactively as jurisdictions and other stakeholders begin their evaluation of the ISSB’s standards.
Review the full announcement on the IFRS Foundation's website.