Objective

1

The objective of AASB 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]

Aus1.1

Notwithstanding paragraph 1 and references in this Standard to ‘require’, ‘requires’, ‘requirements’, ‘prescribes’, ‘shall’ and ‘must’, this Standard is a voluntary Standard. An entity may elect to apply this Standard. However, an entity seeking to state compliance with this Standard would need to apply all of its paragraphs as if this Standard were mandatory.

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.

1

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