Investors campaign for climate lobbying to be added into IFRS S2

Briefing comes as Social LobbyMap finds divergence between trade bodies and individual companies in policy positions

Four large European investors have written to the IFRS Foundation asking it to add lobbying disclosures into ISSB’s climate standard. 

Nordic investment giant Storebrand joined France’s BNP Paribas Asset Management and pension funds Railpen, AkademikerPension – from the UK and Denmark, respectively – to call for “specific educational materials” on policy advocacy.

“The application guidance within IFRS S2 could be enhanced to specifically include climate policy engagement disclosure guidance,” they said. 

Speaking to Real Economy Progress, Storebrand’s head of climate, Emine Isciel, said the briefing “makes clear the material interest in this issue” from the investment industry.  

She said “more acknowledgement and guidance from the IFRS – based on the Global Standard on Responsible Climate Lobbying – would help guide more consistent and high quality reporting from companies”.

The Global Standard on Responsible Climate Lobbying, developed by institutional shareholders, identifies 14 indicators to assess firms’ policy advocacy.

The IFRS Foundation published guidance on how transition plans fitted into the ISSB standards on Monday, which the investors noted “recognises policy action as a key assumption relevant to transition planning”.  

They also called for an assessment of the interoperability between ISSB’s lobbying standards and those included in the European Sustainability Reporting Standards.   

The IFRS Foundation has been contacted for comment. 

Earlier this week, a new initiative called Social LobbyMap published analysis of how businesses and their trade associations engaged around the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CS3D). 

It found that trade associations tended to be more engaged and “markedly more negative than the companies themselves” in their policy advocacy.  

Elissandra da Costa, a specialist at the Eiris Foundation, which developed the Social LobbyMap, told REP that trade bodies’ positions are “way more detailed” than companies’. 

The latter, she added, “rarely develop detailed policy positions independently” and instead tend to sign less specific “joint industry statements prepared by others like NGOs”. 

She also observed a “complete disconnect” between some sustainability teams and their colleagues in external affairs.   

“At the same time you could have the same company or same entity pushing for different things, just because both teams are not having a conversation.”