ISSB Drops Nature Disclosure Draft as EU's Revised ESRS Nears November Force Date

ISSB Launches Nature Disclosure Consultation — Today

In what marks a significant milestone for global sustainability reporting, the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) published its exposure draft on nature-related disclosures on October 22, 2026 — timed deliberately to coincide with COP17, the UN biodiversity summit. According to ESG Today and the IFRS Foundation, the draft proposes a Practice Statement rather than a standalone new standard, a deliberate choice made at the ISSB's April 2026 board meeting in Beijing to avoid disrupting companies and regulators still implementing IFRS S1 and IFRS S2.

The proposed Practice Statement would sit alongside the existing IFRS S1 (General Sustainability Requirements) and IFRS S2 (Climate-related Disclosures) without altering those standards' requirements. As ISSB Chair Emmanuel Faber has framed it, nature-related disclosure is already effectively required — IFRS S1 already compels disclosure of all material sustainability risks — and the new document would clarify how to do it. The consultation window runs 120 days, closing on February 19, 2027. The IFRS Foundation hosted a live webinar today at 16:00 CEST to walk stakeholders through the proposal's scope and how it draws on the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) framework.

EU's Revised ESRS: A November 10 Entry-Into-Force

On the European front, the revised European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) — the rulebook underpinning the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) — are days away from a key legal threshold. Published in the EU's Official Journal on September 22, 2026, the revised standards are set to enter into force on November 10, 2026, according to ESG Today. They will formally apply to financial years beginning January 1, 2027, though Wave 1 reporters already filing under the original 2023 standards have the option to early-adopt.

The revised ESRS, adopted by the European Commission on July 3, 2026 as part of the Omnibus I simplification package, cut mandatory datapoints by roughly 60%, narrowed the CSRD's company scope to those with 1,000-plus employees and €450 million or more in net turnover, and made all topical disclosures — including climate — subject to a materiality test. For climate specifically, the key disclosure on anticipated financial effects of physical and transition risk was retained but renumbered from E1-9 to E1-11. Meanwhile, EFRAG's public consultation on the draft XBRL taxonomy needed for machine-readable ESRS filings remains open until November 11, 2026, with EFRAG aiming to hand the final taxonomy to ESMA and the European Commission before year-end.

SEC Rescission Still Pending; States Step Up

In the United States, the SEC's 2024 climate disclosure rule remains stayed and unenforced. Following a public comment period that closed August 3, 2026, a final rescission vote is widely expected in late 2026 or early 2027 at the earliest, according to multiple practitioner analyses. The regulatory vacuum at the federal level has elevated California's SB 253 and SB 261 as the de facto compliance floor for large U.S. companies, with state-level obligations unaffected by any SEC action.

What It All Means

Today's ISSB nature draft and the EU's imminent ESRS entry-into-force together underscore a widening divergence: international standard-setters and European regulators are pressing forward with disclosure frameworks, while U.S. federal policy moves in the opposite direction. For multinationals, compliance strategy is increasingly shaped by the most demanding jurisdiction they operate in — not by Washington.