The report Board responsibility and sustainability-related disclosure in Asia outlines the role of boards in overseeing sustainability-related disclosures and highlights policy priorities to strengthen governance across the region. This report analyses law and enforcement of sustainability disclosures in a selection of Asian jurisdictions (the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong (China), India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Singapore and Viet Nam) and advanced markets from other regions (France and the United Kingdom). These jurisdictions portray varying levels of economic development, common law and civil law traditions, different degrees of corporate and securities law enforcement, and distinct sustainability-related disclosure regimes. The analysis has been enriched by inputs from policymakers and regulators.
Chapter 1 maps the sustainability disclosure ecosystem, capturing evolutions and regional specificities. It reviews the scope and standards of sustainability-related disclosure, examines assurance frameworks, and proposes a definition for the concept of “sustainability washing”.
Chapter 2 examines directors’ duties and responsibilities in the surveyed jurisdictions. It discusses judicial standards of review applied to board decision-making and approaches to holding directors accountable for breaches of applicable laws and regulations.
Chapter 3 assesses private and public enforcement strategies for sustainability-related disclosures. It distinguishes legal actions by initiator and legal basis and considers the interaction between the enforcement approaches.
Chapter 4 sets out policy recommendations in five key levers of reforms aimed at mitigating and tackling sustainability washing from a regulatory and supervisory standpoint.
This report has been developed by the Capital Markets and Financial Institutions Division of the OECD Directorate for Financial and Enterprise Affairs. It was prepared by Param Nayankumar Pandya, Eliot Evain-Wilkes, Hitesh Tank and Yunus Emre Yildirim, under the supervision of Caio de Oliveira, Head of the Sustainable Finance and Corporate Governance Team, and Serdar Çelik, Head of Division. Daniel Blume from the Division and OECD Corporate Governance Committee delegates provided comments.
Comments and questions should be addressed to cm.sustainability@oecd.org.