Peak Australian Bodies Submission to the ISSB Consultation on Agenda priorities

ASFI contributed to a joint submission to the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) on proposed priorities for its next two-year work plan together with 15 peak professional, industry and investors bodies in Australia. The bodies comprise more than 300 companies and 400,000 business and finance professionals, 500 investors with over US$29 trillion assets under management and represent 7.7 million retail shareholders.

The key messages include:

• We consider clear, transparent, comprehensive, and comparable disclosure of sustainability-related information to be part of the foundation of a well-functioning global financial system and congratulate the ISSB on publishing the IFRS S1 and IFRS S2 standards. The implementation of IFRS1 S1 and IFRS S2 has been critical and there is now opportunity to prioritise the gaps in knowledge, data, capacity, and methodologies that remain.

• The ISSB should share its proposed roadmap of sustainability topic priorities beyond the incoming 2-years to share the connectivity and potential scope of the full ISSB standards to assist jurisdictions to prepare and support new domestic standard development.

• Upcoming research projects on: biodiversity, ecosystems and ecosystem services; human capital; human rights and integration on reporting should be approached in a collaborative and coordinated manner with consideration to other existing and developing frameworks. This includes frameworks such as the TNFD and how these will interact with current and any future IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards.

Read the full submission including the detailed responses to consultations questions here.