The International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) was established by the IFRS Foundation Trustees and announced at COP26 in Glasgow in November 2021. It sits alongside the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and is designed to deliver a global baseline of sustainability-related financial disclosures for capital markets, in the same way the IASB produces IFRS accounting standards.
In June 2023 the ISSB issued its first two standards:
- IFRS S1 – General Requirements for Disclosure of Sustainability-related Financial Information
- IFRS S2 – Climate-related Disclosures
Both took effect for annual reporting periods beginning on or after 1 January 2024, subject to adoption by individual jurisdictions. IFRS S2 incorporates and builds on the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), whose monitoring responsibilities were transferred to the ISSB in 2024. The ISSB also consolidated the Climate Disclosure Standards Board (CDSB) and the Value Reporting Foundation (which housed SASB standards and the Integrated Reporting Framework).
The board is chaired by Emmanuel Faber, former CEO of Danone, and operates from offices in Frankfurt and Montreal, with additional presence in London, San Francisco, Beijing and Tokyo. It was endorsed by the IOSCO (International Organization of Securities Commissions) in July 2023, encouraging its 130-plus member regulators to consider adoption.
For policy researchers, the ISSB matters because it represents the first attempt at a globally interoperable disclosure regime. Its standards are intended to coexist with jurisdiction-specific rules such as the EU's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS), which apply a double materiality lens, while ISSB standards focus on financial materiality — information relevant to investors' assessment of enterprise value.
Adoption decisions are made by national regulators; jurisdictions including the UK, Canada, Australia, Japan, Brazil, Singapore and Nigeria have launched or completed processes to align local rules with IFRS S1 and S2.
Example
In June 2023, the ISSB published IFRS S1 and IFRS S2, with chair Emmanuel Faber framing them as a global baseline for investor-focused climate disclosures.
Frequently asked questions
ISSB standards focus on financial materiality — disclosures relevant to investors and enterprise value — while the EU's CSRD and ESRS apply double materiality, also requiring companies to report their impacts on people and the environment.
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