GISR is a joint project of Ceres, an investor-founded coalition of investors, companies, policy makers and others, and the Tellus Institute, a not-for-profit research and policy organisation in the field of sustainable development. GISR seeks to design a global sustainability ratings standard that measures sustainability performance and can be applied in other sustainability ratings, rankings and indices on an accredited basis. Accordingly, GISR will not rate companies in its own right.

GISR is developing a three-part standard with three components: principles, issues, and indicators. The first component on principles has recently been finalised after a consultation process, and identifies 12 core principles across two categories, process and content.

The MoU between the IIRC and GISR acknowledges the role of each party in the broader development of corporate reporting frameworks and standards, and contains various contains commitments, including:

• supporting and profiling the work of the other to the extent reasonable and practicable
• striving to align corporate reporting, guidelines and standards to achieve complementary and comparable outcomes between the IIRC's <IR> Framework (and other corporate reporting frameworks) and other guidelines and standards
• achieving optimal alignment between the IIRC's <IR> Framework and GISR standard so that disclosed information is useful to GISR accredited ratings
• working cooperatively on the concept of "integrated ratings" which would reflect human, intellectual, natural, social and financial capital
• working together towards appropriate long-term institutional and governance arrangements.

The agreement is effective until 31 December 2015 and may be extended by agreement. Click for :

• Press release (link to GISR website)
• Full text of the MoU (link to IIRC website).