China moves closer to IFRS-aligned climate disclosures
In late December, the Chinese Ministry of Finance (MoF) quietly took a big step in the global climate reporting race, issuing Corporate Sustainability Disclosure Standard No. 1, Climate (Trial), a framework it says is generally aligned with IFRS S2 Climate-related Disclosures.
The new trial standard sets expectations for how companies describe climate related risks, opportunities and impacts, with disclosures structured around governance, strategy, risk and opportunity management, and metrics and targets. It is written to lift the quality and decision usefulness of climate information for investors, lenders, government and other stakeholders.
This move follows the MoF’s consultation launched in May and sits under China’s broader Guideline for Corporate Sustainable Disclosure, Basic Guideline (Trial), signalling a deliberate build-out of a national sustainability disclosure system that can still speak to international baselines.
We will be watching how China turns these requirements into consistent, machine readable reporting, ideally with clear digital tagging approaches that support IFRS style comparability, analytics and AI driven review.
You can read the MoF notice (in Chinese – translators may be required) here.
