IFRS S1 General Requirements for Disclosure of Sustainability-related Financial Information

Objective

1 The objective of IFRS S1 General Requirements for Disclosure of Sustainability- related Financial Information is to require an entity to disclose information about its sustainability-related risks and opportunities that is useful to primary users of general purpose financial reports in making decisions relating to providing resources to the entity.1

2 Information about sustainability-related risks and opportunities is useful to primary users because an entity’s ability to generate cash flows over the short, medium and long term is inextricably linked to the interactions between the entity and its stakeholders, society, the economy and the natural environment throughout the entity’s value chain. Together, the entity and the resources and relationships throughout its value chain form an interdependent system in which the entity operates. The entity’s dependencies on those resources and relationships and its impacts on those resources and relationships give rise to sustainability-related risks and opportunities for the entity.

3 This Standard requires an entity to disclose information about all sustainability-related risks and opportunities that could reasonably be expected to affect the entity’s cash flows, its access to finance or cost of capital over the short, medium or long term. For the purposes of this Standard, these risks and opportunities are collectively referred to as ‘sustainability-related risks and opportunities that could reasonably be expected to affect the entity’s prospects’.

4 This Standard also prescribes how an entity prepares and reports its sustainability-related financial disclosures. It sets out general requirements for the content and presentation of those disclosures so that the information disclosed is useful to primary users in making decisions relating to providing resources to the entity.

Scope

5 An entity shall apply this Standard in preparing and reporting sustainability-related financial disclosures in accordance with IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards.

6 Sustainability-related risks and opportunities that could not reasonably be expected to affect an entity’s prospects are outside the scope of this Standard.

7 Other IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards specify information an entity is required to disclose about specific sustainability-related risks and opportunities.

1 Throughout this Standard, the terms ‘primary users’ and ‘users’ are used interchangeably, with the same meaning.

8 An entity may apply IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards irrespective of whether the entity’s related general purpose financial statements (referred to as ‘financial statements’) are prepared in accordance with IFRS Accounting Standards or other generally accepted accounting principles or practices (GAAP).

9 This Standard uses terminology suitable for profit-oriented entities, including public-sector business entities. If entities with not-for-profit activities in the private sector or the public sector apply this Standard, they might need to amend the descriptions used for particular items of information when applying IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards.

Conceptual foundations

10 For sustainability-related financial information to be useful, it must be relevant and faithfully represent what it purports to represent. These are fundamental qualitative characteristics of useful sustainability-related financial information. The usefulness of sustainability-related financial information is enhanced if the information is comparable, verifiable, timely and understandable. These are enhancing qualitative characteristics of useful sustainability-related financial information (see Appendix D).

Fair presentation

11 A complete set of sustainability-related financial disclosures shall present fairly all sustainability-related risks and opportunities that could reasonably be expected to affect an entity’s prospects.

12 To identify sustainability-related risks and opportunities that could reasonably be expected to affect an entity’s prospects, an entity shall apply paragraphs B1–B12.

13 Fair presentation requires disclosure of relevant information about sustainability-related risks and opportunities that could reasonably be expected to affect the entity’s prospects, and their faithful representation in accordance with the principles set out in this Standard. To achieve faithful representation, an entity shall provide a complete, neutral and accurate depiction of those sustainability-related risks and opportunities.

14 Materiality is an entity-specific aspect of relevance based on the nature or magnitude, or both, of the items to which the information relates, in the context of the entity’s sustainability-related financial disclosures.

15 Fair presentation also requires an entity:

(a) to disclose information that is comparable, verifiable, timely and understandable; and

(b) to disclose additional information if compliance with the specifically applicable requirements in IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards is insufficient to enable users of general purpose financial reports to understand the effects of sustainability-related risks and opportunities