DThese factors are necessary to succeed in the essential ecological and social transition. On the one hand, ambitious public policies, as global as possible, with clear objectives and based on incentive mechanisms. On the other hand, the transformation of financial markets, in essence global, now integrating into their accounting language the risks and opportunities linked to these transitions, so that they can exercise their function of financing the transformation of the economy in allocating capital through the price mechanism. If these two conditions are met, financial markets and public policies will form a powerful alliance in the service of the transition.
The European directive on corporate sustainability reporting (CSRD) offers a political vision of this transition. Launched with the enthusiasm of the European Commission’s Green Deal, it resisted the pandemic crisis, geopolitical conflicts, and the return of inflation. It took vision, determination and leadership for its artisans. The window of opportunity in which CSRD could become a reality was narrow.
The column that I published in these columns on October 10 sparked a lot of reactions and questions. I mentioned what specialists know: the systemic effects of reporting to all stakeholders will take a long time to be felt and the transition cannot wait. Economic materiality, on which the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) focuses, and which is present in the CSRD, is therefore an essential foundation. Its anchoring in the very DNA of the financial market is the real guarantee of the sustainability of the CSRD in the face of political hazards. My point is not to call into question the ambition of “double materiality”, but to put it into perspective.
We would therefore benefit from stopping opposing these approaches because one is the basis of the other, especially since the fundamental standard of the ISSB has in the meantime moved boundaries and opened the way to a regenerative vision of the economy at the global level: “The enterprise and its resources and relationships throughout its value chain together form an interdependent system (…)which contributes to their preservation, regeneration and development, or to their degradation and exhaustion. (…) Her ability to create value for herself is inextricably linked to the value she creates, protects, or erodes for others. »
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