HOW TO GET READY FOR ASRS - AUSTRALIA

STAGE TWO focuses on analysing and translating the data into business risks and opportunities. This step involves making sense of the data you’ve collected and demonstrating you can pinpoint the associated risks and opportunities for disclosure to ASIC. The following questions can help guide you: 1. Am I able to translate climate risks to financial risks? For example, if you’re a property developer, are you land banking in locations presenting potential climate risks such as extreme weather events? These risks would need to be quantified and disclosed. 2. Can I quantify climate-related opportunities? In addition to evaluating the risks, quantifying and disclosing the opportunities is also important. For example, are there opportunities to generate new sources of value and revenue streams for investors or tenants?

It’s now time to develop a strategic plan to address identified gaps, which could include:

Assignment of responsibilities

Milestone development

Budget allocation

Outline cross-functional collaborative requirements

Actions to close the gaps will vary. For your organisation, this may be streamlining data collection; for others, it may be to build out the internal working group to better understand the required metrics or to engage a consultant to assist in the reporting process. With a rigorous approach to collecting, analysing and reporting climate-related data, you have the framework to optimise your broader sustainability plan and mitigate climate risks. A key goal of ASRS is to drive transparency and comparability across organisations. As such, you should anticipate questions from investors and stakeholders about how you stack up against peers or other industry players. While this is not a regulatory obligation, it will likely be a common practice as reporting drives further competition across the industry.