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The basic principles of business and human rights including two key guidances by UN and OECD for multinational enterprises.

EU's "Simplification Omnibus" aims to reduce administrative burdens of CSRD and CSDDD and enhance business competitiveness.

The Voluntary Sustainability Reporting Standard for Non-listed SMEs (VSME) is a framework for SMEs on sustainability factors.

The deadline for the transposition of CSRD has passed. What is the current status of the transposition across 27 EU member states and 3 EEA countries?

Climate change is the first topical standard of ESRS and CSRD. Most if not all reporting companies will disclose information related to Climate Change.

Biomes are the types of ecosystems belonging to one of the four realms (land, freshwater, ocean, and atmosphere) around the planet. Biomes provide ecosystem services to species and inhabitants. To supplement the assessment using the LEAP approach, these additional guidances based on biomes are provided as there may be some specific circumstances particularly relevant for certain biomes.

Strategy and business models (SBMs), impacts, risks and opportunities (IROs), minimum disclosure requirements on policies, actions, metrics, and targets (MDRs).

ESRS 2 General Disclosures is required for all companies. It is considered “sector-agnostic” and “cross-cutting” across Sustainability Topics.

We are starting a series on Navigating CSRD Requirements. In each instalment of this series, we deep dive into a specific section or disclosure requirement of the CSRD. In this first instalment, we look at CSRD Annex 1 European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) 1 - General Requirements.

Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3 GHG emissions is one of the main required reporting metrics across the three main reporting standards, CSRD/ESRS, GRI and ISSB. Is there a high level of inter-operability in the reporting requirements of this important metric across the published standards? We look into this particular reporting requirement.

In the November meeting of the EFRAG working group on Sustainability Reporting, the group provided an update on the guidance for materiality assessment. This document incorporates comments from previous rounds of revisions, and it is expected to be publicly released once all comments are incorporated and it receives approval.

“Who cares wins" by UN Global Compass coined ESG. It provides guidance on environment, social, and governance issues.

2023 is coming to an end, and we want to take stock of the progress in the areas of ESG and business sustainability. For our last blog of this year, we highlight some of our thoughts in four areas: sustainable finance and business sustainability, climate, carbon and data gaps, nature and its realms and services, and disclosures and corporate accountability.

What is the LEAP framework that accompanies the TNFD disclosure recommendations? It stands for “Locate, Evaluate, Assess, Prepare”, and it is a four-step integrated assessment framework for nature-related issues released by the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures.

During Climate Week 2023, The Taskforce for Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) released its inaugural Recommendations on Nature-related Disclosures. Building on the work of the Taskforce for Climate-related Disclosures (TCFD), TNFD sought to accelerate the integration of nature-related topics in financial disclosures in a similar structure to TCFD.

Companies in many industry sectors publish annual sustainability reports detailing sustainability-related initiatives and metrics across Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG) dimensions. These reports typically follow one of the voluntary standards, like the GRI or SASB standards. As part of sustainability reporting, a description of the process for materiality analysis and the resulting prioritization of material topics often is the foundation of the disclosure particularly for those companies reporting in reference to or in accordance with GRI standards.

EFRAG reviewed the initial draft of the Implementation guidance for the materiality assessment on August 23. This document outlines practical information and FAQ on the materiality assessment. After the initial review, this document will be released for a public commenting period of four weeks, following which the final document will be released after approval.

The determination of materiality is central to meeting the regulatory requirements of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). It is also a required process when reporting in accordance with Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standards.

With the arrival of the final standards of ISSB on June 26, the leading global sustainability standards-setting organizations have published the latest standards for sustainability disclosure by large companies and SMEs worldwide.

On June 9th, the European Commission launched the public feedback on its draft Delegated Act for the first set of the ESRS drafted by EFRAG.

Since the early 2010s, corporations have increasingly leveraged bonds as a financial tool to fund various sustainability projects. The funding raised from these bonds are earmarked for environmental and climate-friendly projects, such as renewable energy, sustainable infrastructure, resource conservation, or linked to some environmental objectives.

In 2008, the World Bank issued the first “green bond” to support the financing of projects addressing climate change.

In March 2022, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) released draft rules intended to enhance climate-related disclosures. These rules would require all registrants of SEC to include certain climate-related disclosures in their periodic reports, including the annual report.

UNEP published its latest Climate Risk Landscape report in March 2023. This is a continuation of reports published in 2020 and 2021, which provided an initial overview of the various publicly available climate risk assessment tools, and reflected on the use experience of the financial institutions.

ESG stands for Environment, Social, and Governance, which is a broad set of topics that cover climate action, carbon accounting, employee relations, social inclusion, executive compensation, board governance, etc.

The traditional finance approach to a company's valuation involves a probability-weighted estimation of the "material" events that could impact the company's business.

Materiality is a debated topic in the ESG debate. This term is originally an accounting concept that says that all items reasonably likely to impact investors’ decision-making must be recorded or reported in a business’s financial statements.