UK government joins 37 international partners from six continents to welcome the establishment of the IFRS Foundation’s new International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) at COP26.
The IFRS Foundation has announced the establishment of an International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) to develop comprehensive global baseline sustainability reporting standards under robust governance and public oversight.
The IFRS Foundation confirmed consolidation of two sustainability reporting organisations, the Value Reporting Foundation and the Climate Disclosure Standards Board, to create a global standard-setter for sustainability disclosures for the capital markets.
The Foundation also published two prototype standards to enable the ISSB to rapidly build on existing frameworks, including the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), when developing its standards.
Standards will be subject to full public consultation and can be considered for adoption by jurisdictions on a voluntary basis. Jurisdictions will have their own legal frameworks for adopting, applying or otherwise making use of international standards.
Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors from 37 jurisdictions (list below) from six continents joined the UK in publicly welcoming the announcement of the establishment of the ISSB and its work programme to develop a set of ‘internationally consistent, high-quality and reliable’ baseline standards for disclosure of sustainability-related information on enterprise value creation.
List of jurisdictions:
Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, European Commission, Fiji, France, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, Korea, Luxembourg, Maldives, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Seychelles, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, Tonga, Turkey, UK, Uruguay, USA
As he hosted Finance Day at the climate conference today, Chancellor Rishi Sunak also set out the UK’s plans to become the world’s first net zero aligned financial centre and welcomed “historic” climate commitments from private companies covering $130 trillion of financial assets.
Earlier this week, the government also announced that the UK will enshrine in law mandatory Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD)-aligned requirements for Britain’s largest companies and financial institutions to report on climate-related risks and opportunities.
