IFRS Foundation and TPT confirm details of collaboration at London Climate Week

Going forward, IFRS, the non-profit organisation at the heart of the ISSB standards, will host TPT materials on its IFRS Sustainability Knowledge Hub, a move that could help streamline global transition planning. 

It will also use TPT resources to develop educational materials. TPT was initially launched as a UK-focused think-tank but the collaboration could offer it a global reach.

Over time, the Foundation plans to incorporate TPT materials when considering the need to enhance application guidance within IFRS S2, the organisation said.

The collaboration was announced by TPT’s co-chair and Aviva CEO Amanda Blanc and ISSB’s vice-chair Sue Lloyd on the anniversary of the launch of IFRS S1 and IFRS S2, describing it as “an important milestone.”

 Ben Caldecott, co-head of the TPT secretariat, director of the Oxford Sustainable Finance Group, and the Lombard Odier Associate Professor, welcomed the move: “This is a really great outcome for the future of transition plans, which are now firmly part of the global baseline for sustainability reporting, underpinning a wide range of use cases for many different users across the financial sector and real economy.”

In addition, IFRS aims to work more closely with the Global Reporting Initiative, CDP, and the Taskforce for Nature-related Financial Disclosures.

Lindsey Stewart, director of Stewardship Research and Policy at Morningstar Sustainalytics, commented that the closer collaboration was “welcome news to investors,” furthering the ISSB’s vision of creating a global baseline for such disclosures.

However, he warned that streamlining is urgently needed: “The risks of fragmentation remain high, with regulators in several jurisdictions indicating intentions to delay or cherry-pick implementation of ISSB standards. Investors and reporters can only hope that improving collaboration between the various bodies often described as the ‘alphabet soup’ will help drive better alignment of international sustainability reporting requirements in the second half of the 2020s compared with what we’ve seen in the first half.”