New climate and sustainability disclosure rules on track for issuance by June

New climate and sustainability disclosure rules are on track for issuance by the end of this year’s second quarter, International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) Chair Emmanuel Faber confirmed. 

The board plans to complete redeliberations in February, he said. After that, the ISSB will be balloted, a process that enables standard-setters to take a final look at the draft standards one last time before they are published. 

Redeliberations have been based on the more than one thousand comment letter responses that the board received on IFRS S1, General Requirements for Disclosure of Sustainability-related Financial Information, and S2, Climate-related Disclosures, which were issued in March 2022 for public comment. 

The standards are being developed to provide a global baseline of financial reporting disclosure rules for reporting environmental, social and governance (ESG) related issues. Among other recent decisions, the board agreed to provide companies with an exemption for commercially sensitive information; and to require companies to disclose how international climate agreements, including those on a national level, inform their climate-related targets.  

The new issuance date is later than the one announced last year by the board. Initially, the issuance date had been set for the end of 2022. Still, with the new timeline the process toward the development of the standards moved very quickly – under a year, including proposals.