GRI and ISSB Clarify Disclosure Overlap
The practical issue is disclosure classification: which information can be reused across GRI and ISSB, and where separate materiality judgements are still needed.
The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the IFRS Foundation have issued a 26 May 2026 joint statement on using the GRI Standards together with the ISSB Standards. It responds to stakeholder demand for a more coherent reporting system and clarifies how preparers can handle disclosures that may serve both impact reporting and investor-focused financial disclosure.
The core distinction is between common disclosures that can be aligned and complementary disclosures that address related topics for different reporting purposes.
What the Statement Clarifies
Facilitating efficient reporting when using the GRI and ISSB Standards sets out how the GRI and ISSB Standards are intended to work together: where disclosure requirements can overlap, where disclosures remain complementary, and which audiences each approach serves.
The statement continues the GRI–IFRS Foundation collaboration formalised in the 2022 Memorandum of Understanding and developed further in the May 2024 joint statement on interoperability. A concrete step followed in June 2025, when the Global Sustainability Standards Board (GSSB) granted equivalence to IFRS S2 Climate-related Disclosures for GHG emissions disclosures under GRI 102: Climate Change 2025.
The current work has two tracks: identifying and, where possible, aligning common disclosures; and explaining how complementary disclosures can be used together by entities that choose, or are required, to report for investors and other stakeholders. The stated aim is to reduce duplication, fragmentation and complexity for preparers and users.
The GSSB and ISSB retain separate mandates and due processes. The statement clarifies joint use of existing requirements; it does not add disclosure items, application thresholds or transition timelines.
Two Reporting Purposes
The GRI Standards require entities to report material information about their most significant impacts on the economy, environment and people, and their contributions to sustainable development. The audience includes investors and other users of impact information, including investors with mandates beyond financial return, labour, civil society organisations, local communities and customers.
The ISSB Standards require material information for investors about sustainability-related risks and opportunities that could reasonably be expected to affect an entity’s prospects: its cash flows, access to finance or cost of capital over the short, medium or long term. Disclosure of impacts is required only where those impacts provide material information for investors in relation to risks and opportunities.
The two systems overlap where information about an entity’s impacts is necessary to understand sustainability-related risks and opportunities. Risks and opportunities may also arise without being linked to the entity’s own impacts; the statement gives exposure to extreme weather events as an example.
Common and Complementary Disclosures
Common disclosures are instances where the same information is relevant to both sets of standards, even though each standard uses it for a different purpose. Greenhouse gas emissions are the most developed example in the statement because they already have an equivalence mechanism.
According to that separate GRI 102 and IFRS S2 statement, organisations using both standards can use IFRS S2 disclosures on Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3 GHG emissions to meet corresponding GRI 102: Climate Change 2025 requirements, provided emissions are measured using the GHG Protocol and the GRI content index points to the relevant disclosure location.
Complementary disclosures address related topics from different mandates. The statement gives transition plans and climate adaptation as the example: GRI 102: Climate Change 2025 addresses impacts, while IFRS S2 addresses risks and opportunities on the same topics.
For preparers, the operational issue is classification. Some disclosures can be aligned and cross-referenced. Others need separate drafting because the audience, purpose and materiality judgement differ.
Practical Meaning for Teams
For reporting teams, the immediate issue is disclosure classification before drafting. Where a disclosure is common, teams need agreed ownership, evidence that can support both reporting purposes and clear cross-references, including through the GRI content index when IFRS S2 emissions disclosures are used to meet GRI 102: Climate Change 2025 requirements.
Materiality conclusions still need separate review. A topic may be significant under GRI because of the entity’s impacts, but may not be material under ISSB unless it informs sustainability-related risks or opportunities that could affect the entity’s prospects.
What to Watch Next
GRI and the IFRS Foundation identify continuing work on nature-related disclosures and GRI–TNFD interoperability, GRI Sector Standards and SASB Standards, ISSB research on human capital disclosures, and the GSSB’s revision of labour-related standards and disclosures.
Nature-related disclosures will be an important area for the interoperability work because they bring together the ISSB’s workstream and existing GRI–TNFD alignment. For preparers, the issue will be how to connect impact information with investor-focused risk and opportunity disclosure without treating them as the same assessment.
