Towards a sustainable future

There is never a shortage of news about the latest developments on sustainable reporting, and November was no exception. While non-financial reporting is linked in Europe to the mandatory requirements in the Accounting Directive, the requirements in that Directive are fairly high-level. The Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) report has been highly influential but it does not have the weight of law in the same way as IFRS standards have in Europe and elsewhere in the world. Nevertheless, the IASB has recently published an article explaining how its standards implicitly contain requirements that relate to climate-change and other risks. The key points raised are set out below, together with some observations about the future for corporate reporting in this important area.