The IFRS Foundation, after having received hundreds of comment letters and conducted numerous outreach sessions about a consultation paper released last fall, concluded that there is robust demand for its involvement in the ESG reporting arena, though it will take until September to decide whether this means forming a Sustainability Standards Board of its own.

The IFRS Foundation paper came at a time of rapid movement in ESG reporting as major organizations to address a lack of consistency and comparability among the myriad frameworks and standards that have emerged over the years. In a parallel effort, five leading sustainability organizations--the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), the Climate Disclosure Standards Board (CDSB), the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), and the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) and the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB)-- embarked on an initiative to create a unified reporting system that can incorporate all their products. Relatedly, two of the coalition partners, the IIRC and the SASB, also announced a merger between their two organizations with an eye toward further consolidating the space.

The Foundation, in its latest annoucement, said it will undertake further analysis to determine whether the best course of action is an entirely new board responsible for overseeing sustainability reporting standards, or just bolstering current efforts. It will produce a definitive proposal (including a road map with timeline) by the end of September 2021; should it decide to establish a new board, which would operate alongside the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), then the Foundation would seek to announce its formal establishment at the next meeting of the United Nations Climate Change Conference COP26 in November 2021.