The IFRS Foundation’s International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) will take over responsibility for monitoring progress of companies’ climate-related disclosures from the Financial Stability Board’s (FSB) Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) as of 2024, following a request from the FSB. The transfer of responsibilities marks a significant step in the ongoing consolidation of sustainability reporting standards, following the publication last month of the ISSB’s global standards for sustainability and climate reporting.

The TCFD was established by the FSB in 2015, with the goal of developing consistent disclosure standards for companies, to enable investors and other stakeholders to assess the companies’ climate-related financial risk. The recommendations were published in June 2017, and have until now effectively been serving as the industry standard for climate-related disclosure. The TCFD recommendations were also broadly incorporated into the requirements of the ISSB’s climate related disclosure standard.

The ISSB was launched in November 2021 at the COP26 climate conference, with the goal to develop IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards, driven by demand from investors, companies, governments and regulators to provide a global baseline of disclosure requirements enabling a consistent understanding of the effect of sustainability risks and opportunities on companies’ prospects.