In his speech, Mr Faber likened the issuance of the two new standards to crossing a frontier and called the new disclosure requirements "sustainability translated into an accounting language", a new common language to build more resilient economics.

Mr Faber sketched the development of global capital markets and pointed out the many frontiers that needed to be crossed, including setting up the IFRS Foundation and the IASB that developed a truly international financial reporting system that played a huge role global markets to really become global. He noted that this financial reporting system has enabled capital to flow through emerging countries including gradually into Africa.

And yet, Mr Faber stated, the world is very conscious that we are now at an even more challenging frontier for capital markets and for the future of accounting. This is due to the fact, he said, the metrics developed are no longer doing what they were needed to do as linear growth is reaching its limits:

We are reaching the boundaries where uncertainty is growing and is hitting the market, hitting financial stability — the systemic stability — of markets. Because we did not count all that counts and which ESG tries to capture.

Mr Faber then pointed out that the issuance of the first two ISSB standards was the first step in developing a consistent and comprehensive language for broadening the horizons of the financial statements. There is a need, he said, to broaden the scope by going into the entire value chains of companies and to open the time horizon.

The new language would enable companies not only to describe relationships and dependencies, but also the current and anticipated impacts that they may have and the sustainability-related risks and opportunities, as some of them may be material to investment decisions. He concluded his speech by stating:

We know there will be a learning curve. We are very clear that capacity building will be front and centre of our work for the next several months and probably several years, working with everyone in this room and beyond to ensure that this language is used effectively. And that everyone crosses the frontier and starts this critical journey together.

Please click to access the full transcript of his speech on the IFRS Foundation website.