Editorial

The IASB has begun work on its project to assess whether any of its standards need to be amended so that companies' financial statements will better reflect the effects of climate-related risks than they do at present. This work is a part of the larger overarching objective to assure the "connectivity" of the board's standards with those of its sister board, the ISSB. This connectivity aims to ensure that there are neither gaps nor overlaps between their standards, and that the information provided by sustainability reporting dovetails with that from financial reporting, so that the two reports form a seamless and coherent whole. This is easier said than done as there are so many different elements in reporting standards, including their conceptual basis, their format, the form of words that are used, and the way in which illustrative examples, application guidance and educational material are included or developed to make the requirements easier for companies to apply. All of these elements play a role before considering the detailed content of the standards and their taxonomies. In IASB meetings, members often ask staff to ensure that wording is consistent with that used in other standards; ultimately, in the common language of IFRS, many words or phrases have a particular meaning, much to the dismay of translators who have had to find ways of expressing "extraordinary" and "exceptional" or "probable" and "reasonably probable" in their own languages. The IASB seeks as far as possible to ensure that wording is consistently used across its standards. Now the two boards are facing the challenge of ensuring not only that words are used in the same way, but that all the other elements of their standards are consistent or complementary in order to connect them. Failure to do this could jeopardise the credibility of financial reports as well as leading to criticisms of greenwashing in relation to sustainability reports.