Get Involved: Seeking Experts for ISO Strategic Advisory Group on the Environmental, Social and Governance Ecosystem

Responses are due by August 27, 2021

As the U.S. member body to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) is seeking prospective experts for a newly formed ISO Strategic Advisory Group on the Environmental, Social, and Governance Ecosystem (SAG ESG). ANSI is also seeking members for the ANSI virtual technical advisory group (VTAG) to support the ANSI experts on the ISO SAG ESG.

At its June 2021 meeting, the ISO Technical Management Board (ISO/TMB) decided to form the new ISO SAG ESG, with the following mandate:

• Articulate the value proposition that ISO brings to the ESG ecosystem
• Identify alignment, gaps, and opportunities for ISO, utilizing the mapping of the current ESG disclosure frameworks, standards, and indicators to ISO standards
• Develop recommendations and guidance on how to strengthen the linkage between ISO standards and ESG disclosure frameworks for ESG reporting
• Map stakeholders in the ESG ecosystem
• Develop a stakeholder engagement strategy to provide a mechanism to effectively collaborate with stakeholders in the ESG ecosystem at the technical and strategic policy level. The strategy shall identify clear roles and responsibilities within ISO and in relation to its membership.
• Develop recommendations on how the ISO conformity assessment standards can help solve some of the challenges identified, including a pilot of how to leverage these ISO standards to meet users’ needs in the ESG ecosystem
• Develop an approach to monitor changes in the ESG operating environment and a mechanism to enable those changes to inform the relevant ISO technical committees and the ISO engagement strategy
• Provide advice on mechanisms to effectively coordinate activities in ISO technical committees to enable alignment of standardization deliverables with primary ESG disclosure frameworks and the defined engagement strategy
• Develop recommendations for tools to support ISO committees who may have linkages to ESG considerations

Background on Environmental, Social, and Governance Disclosure Frameworks and Standards

In recent years, organizations have become more responsive to their stakeholders regarding the positive and negative environmental and social impacts of their operations while demonstrating sound governance practices. Organizations disclose these impacts and activities through environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure frameworks and standards.

However, several challenges remain, as there is a lack of harmonization and consensus in proposed ESG frameworks, and lack of guidance on the best ways to transform existing processes and operations to meet the indicators of various ESG frameworks. Additionally, there is lack of trust and stakeholder confidence in the ranking's results from the various frameworks and indices.

ISO's newly published SAG proposal provides details on opportunities for ISO to play a bigger role to ensure that the ESG frameworks continue to have a far-reaching and positive impact. The document also details related work of ISO technical committees (TC) that develop standards to address ESG issues, including ISO/TC 207 Environmental management, ISO/TC 322, Sustainable finance, ISO/TC 309, Governance of organizations, and potentially the new TC on Social Responsibility.

Ultimately, the expected outputs of the ISO SAG ESG are:

• the development of a strategy and final report and recommendations for ISO/TMB approval; and
• to clarify and articulate ISO’s value proposition in the ESG ecosystem and propose next steps for ISO.