The impact of climate-related risks on financial statements

Subject Areas : Financial accounting

Elham Hamidi ¹ , Morteza Asadi ² , Majid Rastegar Pooyani ³

1 - Assistant Prof, Department of Accounting, Faculty of Management and Finance, Khatam University, Tehran, Iran.
2 - MSc. in Accounting, Faculty of Management, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
3 - PhD in Accounting, Faculty of Management and Economics, Tarbiat Modarres University, Tehran, Iran.

Received: 2024-08-28 Accepted : 2024-11-26 Published : 2025-01-27

Keywords: climate-related risks, international financial reporting standards, materiality, judgment,

Abstract :

As the world faces increasing environmental and social challenges, the demand for reliable and transparent sustainability reporting has increased significantly and has shifted dramatically from voluntary to mandatory reporting. In this regard, in November 2021, the Trustee[1] of the International Financial Reporting Standards Foundation announced the formation of the International Sustainability Standards Board[2] with the aim of developing high-quality, global and comprehensive sustainability disclosure standards in order to meet the information needs of investors. And in June 2023, the International Sustainability Standards Board published International Sustainability Financial Reporting Standard 1 on General Requirements for Sustainability-Related Financial Disclosures and International Sustainability Financial Reporting Standard 2 on Climate-Related Disclosures. The immediate impact of climate-related issues on the financial statements may not necessarily be quantitatively significant, but entities' stakeholders expect the entity to explain how it considers climate-related issues in the preparation of the financial statements and the major assumptions, estimates and judgments involved. One of the concerns of stakeholders is the uneven application of international financial reporting standards published by the International Accounting Standards Board for climate-related risks and the disclosure of insufficient information about these risks in financial statements. In this article, by examining the effects of climate-related issues on financial statements, an attempt is made to alleviate the concerns of stakeholders in this area.

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