The general standard for disclosing sustainability risks and opportunities capable of affecting cash flows, from the investor's perspective alone.
IFRS S1 sets the general framework for disclosing sustainability-related information, which S2 then specializes for climate. Its decisive feature is the choice of materiality: it retains financial materiality alone, namely what could reasonably affect the entity's cash flows, access to finance or cost of capital, and not the entity's impact on its environment. That is the substantive divergence from the European directive, which applies double materiality, and the divergence makes the two bodies of rules complementary rather than interchangeable despite a similar information architecture. It also requires publication at the same time as the financial statements and for the same reporting entity, ending the sustainability report issued six months later on a different perimeter. For an insurer it produces a chain effect: what it publishes about its own risks depends on what its investees and its insureds publish, so a jurisdiction adopting the standard shifts data availability for everyone who depends on it.
The International Sustainability Standards Board issued IFRS S1 and IFRS S2 on 26 June 2023, applicable to reporting periods beginning on or after 1 January 2024 in jurisdictions that adopt them.
IFRS S1, ISSB S1, informations liées à la durabilité