The initiative of the International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS) to establish a Sustainability Standards Board is a move in the right direction for creating a global, verifiable and credible reporting system on sustainability. But to ensure that all firms disclose information on sustainability by respecting a set of minimum standards both in terms of reporting and harmonisation, regulation will play an essential role.
Members of the G20 will have to continue working together over the coming years to agree on basic principles which can make disclosed data comparable across countries, allowing the market to verify the alignment of investment with sustainability targets (the so-called “taxonomies”) and preserving the flexibility required to adapt them to region or country-specific features.