Carol Adams, Global Sustainability Standards Board (GSSB) Chair, and Bastian Buck, GSSB Chief of Standards presented an overview of the GSSB work programme over the next two years. In the presentation, the GSSB staff gave an overview of the system of GRI Standards, the GSSB’s priority areas for 2023-2025, how it sees the future collaboration with partners like the ISSB, and which topic and sector standards are currently in the pipeline. They also gave an overview of the GSSB’s research activities and how the GSSB supports implementation of GRI Standards.

ISSB discussion

There were some questions from ISSB members on certain topics of the presentation. Most of the questions focused on assurance.

For example, one ISSB member asked about the extent to which preparers sought external assurance on disclosures based on the application of GRI Standards. The staff said that a recent survey by the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) revealed that already around 40% of the GRI preparers have some form of external assurance on their disclosures. While this is still a low number, GRI is the leading sustainability framework in terms of external assurance. There is also a disclosure requirement in GRI about whether and at which level external assurance has been sought, and the number of preparers who sought assurance on GRI information has been increasing over the past few years. However, some of the assurance engagements are quite limited, which will change with the arrival of International Standard on Sustainability Assurance (ISSA) 5000.

One ISSB member was interested as to why GRI Standards were popular in the Asian region. The ISSB conceded that the Standards were initially focused on North America and Europe, however many capital market regulators in Asia started making reference to GRI Standards and, therefore, many listed companies adopted GRI Standards. In addition, global conglomerates have started using GRI to get access to information in their value chain.

No decisions were made.