Travers Smith's Sustainability Insights: Sustainability reporting: retreat or reset?

Worldwide, reporting has become the poster child for the unnecessary burdens placed on companies in the name of sustainability. Culling reporting requirements, as a result, becomes the way that regulators demonstrate that they are listening to and supporting business. The EU, Australia, Brazil and of course the US have cut current or proposed sustainability reporting rules in the past year.

Unlike the EU, which was widely seen as having gone too far, too fast with its originally broad and far-reaching CSRD reporting framework, the UK has adopted a more cautious approach. As we have previously noted, it seemed to have learned from the EU's "mistakes" and taken time to consider the difficult balancing act between driving useful sustainability disclosures on the one hand and proportionate burdens on the other. Recent developments have led to questions over where exactly that balance lies.