The International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) has officially published the first two ESG disclosure standards which should become the basis for the harmonization of non-financial reporting in the world. Russian state departments are evaluating the prospects for their use, as reported by Interfax.
The papers, released at the IFRS Foundation's annual conference on June 26, are the first step towards building unified global approaches to disclosing high-quality, comparable sustainability information needed to make investment decisions. It is envisaged that the ISSB standards, which the G7 and other international organizations have actively supported, will be gradually consolidated as mandatory at the level of individual countries.
The standards will come into force from January 2024, but will be implemented in stages. According to the decision taken earlier by the ISSB, companies will be able to limit themselves to full and high-quality disclosure of information on climate risks in the first year of implementation of the new rules (the standard "Disclosure of information related to climate" - S2). Starting from the second year, companies will have to start publishing full data on the full range of new requirements (they are defined by the second document - the General Standard for Disclosure of Information Related to Sustainable Development - S1).
In the first year, companies will therefore not need to disclose, in particular, information on risks and opportunities related to sustainable development apart from climate-related information, neither will they need to disclose annual information on sustainable development along with financial statements or information on greenhouse gas emissions under Scope 3.
Russian departments are now discussing their own methodological recommendations for non-financial reporting, but at the same time they are ready to use the standards of the IFRS Foundation.
Interfax's survey of Russia's largest public companies showed that they are ready to adhere to the standards demanded by investors and foreign trading partners and adopted at the level of national regulatory authorities. At the same time, businesses also see certain technical difficulties in implementing new requirements.
In an interview with Interfax the head of the Russian National ESG Alliance Andrei Sharonov expressed the opinion that Russia would be generally ready to join the process of adapting new international standards.
