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In answer to the growing and urgent demand to improve the global consistency and comparability of companies’ sustainability disclosures to meet the needs of investors and other capital market participants, the Trustees of the IFRS Foundation began working towards the creation of an international sustainability standards board in October 2019. The Trustees announced the formation of the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) at COP26 in Glasgow.

As part of this work towards the formation of a new board, the Trustees created the Technical Readiness Working Group (TRWG) of leading organisations with expertise in sustainability and integrated reporting standard-setting focused on meeting investors’ needs.

The TRWG was formed to provide a running start for the new board, as described in the Trustees’ 8 March 2021 statement. The TRWG also responded to the International Organization of Securities Commissions' (IOSCO) 24 February 2021 call for the coordination of work to drive international consistency of companies’ sustainability-related disclosures that focus on enterprise value creation. 

The purpose of the TRWG was to enable the ISSB to build on the well-established work of long-standing international initiatives focused on enterprise value. The specific technical objectives the TRWG worked toward were recommendations on:

  • General Requirements for Disclosure of Sustainability-related Financial Information;
  • Climate-related Disclosures Prototype;
  • Conceptual guidelines for standard setting;
  • Architecture of standards;
  • Other items to inform a standard-setting agenda;
  • Due process characteristics;
  • Digitisation strategy; and
  • Connectivity between the IASB and the ISSB.

For further information on these deliverables please see the Summary of the Technical Readiness Working Group's Programme of Work.