ISSB and GRI provide update on ongoing collaboration

The International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) Foundation and the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) announced their Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in March and have since then committed to seeking coordination regarding their work programs and standard-setting activities.

While the need for further harmonization in the sustainability reporting landscape on an international level is not lost on them, the IFRS standards and the GRI standards can be seen as two interconnected systems that address different disclosures but can form a comprehensive corporate reporting regime together.

Technical representatives from both of the organizations outlined different fields of actions that could provide necessary clarification and alignment.

Such as follows:

• Technical aspects of collaboration are to be advanced through meeting schedules and roadmaps.
• The purpose of this mapping exercise is to identify those requirements in the International Sustainability Standards Board's (ISSB) General Requirements and Climate Exposure Drafts that are equivalent to GRI Standards in order to assist in aligning disclosures, guidance, concepts, and definitions.
• A comparison exercise of ISSB’s General Features and Qualitative Characteristics of Information in the General Requirements Exposure Draft with GRI 1: Foundation, to identify scope for alignment or explanation of differences.
• Developing a methodology for cross-referencing guidance and other materials produced by GRI and ISSB to maximize their usefulness.
• Identifying future priorities to maximize joint standard-setting and guidance development activities, where the information requirements are the same or similar.
• Explanations of how GRI and ISSB standards differ or complement each other.