Global Investors for Sustainable Development Alliance

UN entities share their vision for the ISSB standards

Jun 28, 2022

Several UN entities have produced a joint statement that puts forward their vision to create a sustainability reporting framework, which is fit-for-purpose and supportive of globally agreed ambitions and goals.

The statement highlights the need for a holistic and forward-looking approach to assessing enterprise value, which would enable a company and its investors to account for uncertainty linked to sustainability risks and opportunities.

It also stresses the need to avoid selective disclosure from reporting entities by requiring that all companies report on a globally harmonized set of core sector-agnostic indicators, which should be complemented by industry-specific indicators.

In addition, the statement lays out additional steps to strengthen the impact of the standards, such as: (i) including clear guidance on what constitutes appropriate sustainability analysis and management; (ii) encouraging entities to set sustainability targets; (iii) requiring geographically contextualized disclosures; and (iv) adopting an explicit long-term time horizon.

Finally, the statement recognizes that sustainability management and reporting remain complex and that countries are not equally prepared, and calls on the ISSB to support capacity needs in developing countries while protecting them from negative spillovers.