Global Green Reporting Rules Emerging From the Chaos

Global standard setters responding to demand for mandatory green accounting rules face an important hurdle to making them viable: They must first present a united front to cut through a confusing array of competing initiatives.

“There is growing and urgent demand,” Lee White, executive director of the IFRS Foundation, said in a recent interview.

It is becoming clearer how the sometimes competing—and voluntary—green reporting standards that already exist will be merged into the mandatory standards under development. The IFRS Foundation, parent of the International Accounting Standards Board, has proposed setting up a parallel body to develop sustainability standards; the rules ...