Results of the Survey on Financial Regulators’ Initiatives Regarding Corporate Climate-Related Disclosures: ADBI–ADB Climate Finance Dialogue Progress Report

Key Points

• Since the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) released the Climate-Related Disclosures in June 2023, there has been an increasing momentum globally toward standardizing climate-related corporate disclosure. The Task Force for Climate-Related Disclosure (TCFD) recommendations are fully incorporated into the ISSB Standards.
• Asia needs significant clean energy investment, and collective actions to promote foreign private sector capital flows are desirable. Sharing information on corporate disclosure, supervisory approaches, and transition finance could promote interoperability among Asian governments and regulators.
• The ADBI-ADB Asian Climate Finance Dialogue project, launched in November 2023, aims to promote dialogue among financial regulators and central banks on climate-related information disclosure and policies, supporting private climate finance scale-up and ensuring financial stability in Asia.
• As part of our project, ADBI conducted a survey on the status of climate-related disclosures across 12 Asian economies. This policy brief presents a summary of the survey. Overall, the majority of financial regulators have not yet formally endorsed the TCFD recommendations and/or ISSB Standards, but nearly half of them have set a timeline for their adoption in the near future. Moreover, 75% of the economies have recommended GHG emission data but only 25% with regard to emission targets. While half of the economies plan to fully adopt ISSB Standards, 75% plan to apply them to certain types of companies, and 60% require external assurance.
• The survey also sheds light on the challenges faced by regulators—such as obtaining high-quality Scope 3 GHG emissions data and ensuring a smooth, practical, and adaptive integration of domestic circumstances to international disclosure standards including TCFD/ISSB.