The ISSB would be tasked with developing global standards in an effort to provide effective oversight of companies’ expanded reporting obligations and consolidate the fragmented ecosystem of sustainability and corporate reporting guidelines.

The mandate would be to formulate “a reporting system that delivers consistent, comparable, reliable, and assurable information relevant to enterprise value creation, sustainable development and evolving expectations,” according to IFAC’s statement, enabling the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) to remain focused on financial reporting standards.

IFAC suggests that the ISSB should:

  • promote global adoption and use of its standards in both IFRS and non-IFRS jurisdictions;
  • take into consideration the expertise and disclosure requirements of leading initiatives, including CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project), Climate Disclosure Standards Board (CDSB), Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC), and Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB);
  • and connect both financial and nonfinancial information through a conceptual framework based on the integrated reporting principles of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD).

About the Authors

Daniel Butcher
Daniel Butcher is the finance editor at IMA and staff liaison to IMA’s Committee on Ethics. You can reach him at daniel.butcher@imanet.org.

October 2020

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