Impact Disclosure Taskforce Releases Impact Disclosure Guidance, Helping Scale Financing for the UN Sustainable Development Goals

The Impact Disclosure Taskforce today released its draft impact disclosure guidance, helping entities committed to addressing development needs and reducing global inequality to access growing pools of sustainable capital.

Established in April of 2023 and now a 60+ strong network of financial institutions, capital markets participants, and industry stakeholders, the Taskforce was formed to help corporate entities and sovereigns measure and disclose their efforts to reduce major gaps to achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The release of the draft voluntary guidance today initiates a four-month public consultation period, from April 18, 2024 to September 1, 2024, during which the Taskforce welcomes feedback from industry participants and practitioners.

The voluntary guidance aims to assist corporate and sovereign entities, particularly those in emerging markets and developing economies (EMDE), to use the principles of impact measurement and monitoring to attract sustainable pools of capital. The guidance also envisions establishing mechanisms for disseminating and analyzing disclosed impact information to promote transparency and accountability. The creation of a Sustainable Development Impact Disclosure (SDID) could provide sustainable financiers with more information to assist financing decisions.

The guidance draws on existing resources and outlines a 5-step process for entities to measure and disclose the impacts of their business strategies or national development plans. The guidance reflects a view amongst financiers that the full balance sheet of entities that follow this process would be considered for their sustainable capital allocation. The guidance is characterized by being:

• Entity-level: assesses the entity’s overall strategy in countries of focus, as opposed to project-level frameworks;
• Impact-oriented: focuses on outputs and outcomes, rather than a taxonomy of sustainable activities or eligible investments;
• Forward-looking: establishes targets that measure intended impacts, as opposed to reporting on current sustainability levels; and
• Context-specific: tailors document to account for development gaps in local jurisdictions.

J.P. Morgan and Natixis Corporate & Investment Banking, the Taskforce co-chairs, supported DP World, a leading global logistics and supply chain solutions provider, in creating the pilot SDID under the Impact Disclosure Guidance. This pilot SDID focuses on DP World’s anticipated contributions to SDGs focused on health, education, equality and economic growth through emerging markets infrastructure. See DP World’s full SDID created in accordance with the impact disclosure guidance here: www.dpworld.com/sustainability.