The ISSB will hold a board meeting next week (18-21 October) in Montreal where it will tackle its future work plan.
The IFRS staff has recommended that the ISSB build on the foundation established by IFRS S1 and IFRS S2, which could potentially be done without going through a consultation.
This includes continuing efforts to internationalise the SASB standards as industry-specific standards and protecting the legacy of the SASB standards.
ISSB chair Emmanuel Faber told the Sustainability Consultative Committee it could take years to design industry-specific standards and therefore it is important not to lose the momentum of adoption for those legacy standards.
The second area would be to enable the adoption of the two standards that are being finalised through materials to support capacity building, work on clarifying core concepts, and publishing an exposure draft of the digital taxonomy for IFRS sustainability standards.
"One core concept that is very dear to me in terms of the need for thorough analysis is to finalise the proper definition of sustainability and the clarification of materiality, staying in our remit of course of capital markets," Faber told the SCC. "We are halfway, but we need a few more months."
The third area is connectivity with financial accounting standards (IFRS standards) and interoperability with other standards, specifically GRI standards and EFRAG's standards.
"We are also thinking about potentially using ESRS as a source of reference when we haven't yet created our own standards," Faber said.
The fourth aspect is working immediately on enablers of climate resilience, and here Faber highlighted biodiversity and the just transition as possible areas.
The IFRS staff also recommended that the ISSB set out proposals for new research and standard setting for stakeholder input to inform the board's decisions on the future work plan. In response to feedback from ISSB members, the staff proposed the board include corporate governance as an item to focus on in this list.
