ISSB the first step in the right direction?
Sallie Pilot
Advisor | Stewardship | Governance | Stakeholder Engagement | Strategic Comms | Best Practice | ESG | Sustainability
The International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) has been created to help create a consistent set of global sustainability reporting standards. Investors, corporates, and a plethora of other stakeholders, including myself and many others working in this space have been appealing for the creation of for many years. To help us help companies provide useful decision-making information to their stakeholders and to help all of us ensure that companies the world over are accountable for information relating to environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues.
The ISSB is moving forward at a pace. Convergence is happening. Already we’ve had the absorption of several leading reporting standards bodies, along with favourable reception of these steps by governments and financial regulatory bodies, as well as the involvement of the World Economic Forum (WEF).
Is it perfect yet? No.
Moving from a highly fragmented ecosystem of standards and frameworks to a harmonised system of globally comparable standards was never going to be easy.
But it is needed.
We operate in global capital markets with a spectrum of players – multiple market participants, regulators in different markets. Each have different levels of ambitions for policy making and change. The speed at which regulators are taking positions on ESG issues and climate is different. Some are going much further and moving much faster than others. Ultimately, governments will develop ESG policies and a regulatory landscape that works for their market, tailored to their priorities and their economy.?
The challenge is:
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I know from my experience, what both investors and companies are looking for is a global baseline for disclosure that they can use across all those markets.
And I also know that all investors, companies and other stakeholders will benefit from a common language for sustainability reporting standards, to facilitate comparisons and better conversations.
That is what the ISSB will create. A global baseline to elevate sustainability disclosure to the same level of financial standards that companies use around the world to communicate with investors.
Many argue it’s not enough. Some argue it’s too much.
I argue that it’s a very important step in the right direction.
I also argue that it’s not far enough.
Climate change needs to be addressed. Wars need to be stopped. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) need to be delivered.
But we need to move now. We need to move fast, and we need to move together.
?
Systems Transformation Catalyst
3 年Sallie, I appreciate how you frame I?SB as "first steps" and acknowledge that "it’s not far enough" but that we need to "move together." Couldn't the same have been said a decade ago, when IIRC and SASB were launched? Looking back at that decade, what I see is unfulfilled potential for bridging the "not far enough" gap. We didn't move together -- we moved at the pace of incrementalism. So are we simply setting ourselves up for a "rinse and repeat" pattern where the next decade is Groundhog Day of the last decade? The IPCC says we have a brief window of opportunity, and so it seems like it's a good time for the incrementalists to hand the baton (that they've been carrying for the last decade) to the transformationalists -- unless we want to close the window of opportunity...
Finder and Chairman @ Humanforce360 | Operationalizing Systemic Transformative Leadership | Collective Human Wisdom Designer
3 年Sallie Pilot, how about a common language within the business first? How can we really truly articulate outside what we can't even understand inside? There is no outside sustainability if there is not some common language inside, within and with the outside. Why can't investors learn to understand the business and all that we try to do is to make meaningless metrics to feed stupid algorithms to fit companies in PR-Marketing boxes?