1) Do you remember the ‘rebuttable presumption’ that we mentioned last week? The EFRAG board tried to find an alternative to this process.
The main suggestions are either to adopt a fully implicit approach (corporates would only disclose the metrics they found material after their assessment, without saying anything about the missing ones) or a ‘light explicit’ approach (corporates would publish the list of the metrics they wouldn’t report, but without the explanation that was required in the initial proposal).
Stay tuned for their final decision!
2) China grants foreign banks access to the central government facility for green finance with the aim to raise China’s standards of sustainability. This is the first step towards closing the gap between the Chinese green finance standards and Global ESG norms since many Chinese domestic banks are unaware of global standards. China currently holds the world’s largest green credit balance, reaching up to 2.3 trillion USD.
[Source: ‘Why China is tapping into foreign banks’ expertise to aid decarbonization push’]
3) Sometimes working on the theory makes you forget the practical aspect. This is what BirdLife, a global partnership of non-governmental organisations working to conserve birds, criticises about the criteria of the European taxonomy relating to biodiversity.
Some of the actions requested under the DNSH criteria are described as meaningless… and the delegated act would be likely to do more harm than good to forestry!
The partnership calls for more robust DNSH criteria and a review of the forestry and bioenergy criteria defined in the Climate Change Delegated Act.
[Source: ‘EU green taxonomy – burning biodiversity’ – BirdLife]
4) WWF has been advocating alongside central banks and financial supervisors climate and biodiversity related financial risks to be a fundamental consideration of any directive. This call-to-action plan is supported by around 90 other organisations and leaders who are for the same cause. Some of those who have cosigned for this plan include the UN Environment Programme Finance Initiative, European Environment Bureau, Nature Finance (Finance for Biodiversity), and NRDC and New Economics Foundation.
5) In Luxembourg, the CSSF (Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier) announced in a press release on 6 September that the RTS (Regulatory Technical Standards) confirmation letter, for the purpose of CSSF visa stamping of the fund prospectus under the SFDR, is available on its website.
The process for benefiting from an accelerated SFDR RTS examination and visa issuance is explained and announced as being available only until 31 October 2022.
[Source: ‘Key elements on the SFDR RTS accelerated procedure with the CSSF’ – Simmons+Simmons]
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