The documents this all rests on.
Forty primary sources — the regulation that requires the disclosure, the standards that define the method, the Indian rules that govern the records, and the assurance literature that decides whether any of it holds. Each one links to the issuer, because the issuer's copy is the current copy.
Most sustainability reading lists are secondary — explainers about standards, summaries of regulation, a vendor's interpretation of what a rule requires. This one is deliberately not. Every entry is the document itself, held at the address its issuer publishes it from, so what you read is the current text rather than someone's account of it from two amendments ago.
We host nothing here. These texts belong to the bodies that wrote them, several are behind a registration or a purchase, and the version that matters is always the one on the issuer's own site. Each link was checked in September 2026; standards bodies move URLs, so if one has rotted, tell us and it gets fixed. Inclusion is not endorsement, and none of this is legal advice.
Disclosure regulation and standards
What an organisation is required or expected to disclose, and in what structure. These are the texts the framework pages prepare evidence against.
| Document | Issuer · date | What it governs |
|---|---|---|
| Business Responsibility and Sustainability Reporting by listed entities | SEBI · May 2021 | The circular that created BRSR and its reporting format. The starting point for any Indian listed entity, and the parent of everything below it. |
| BRSR Core — framework for assurance and ESG disclosures for value chain | SEBI · July 2023 | Introduces the nine BRSR Core attributes and the requirement that they be independently checked. This is the circular that turned reporting into an evidence problem. |
| Industry Standards on Reporting of BRSR Core | SEBI · December 2024 | Standardises how the Core attributes are computed and reported, so two companies answering the same question answer it the same way. |
| Measures to facilitate ease of doing business: assurance or assessment, value chain, green credits | SEBI · March 2025 | Replaces “assurance” with “assurance or assessment”, eases the value-chain obligation and adds voluntary green-credit disclosure. The most commonly missed amendment in the chain. |
| Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (EU) 2022/2464 | European Union · December 2022 | The directive that requires sustainability reporting across the EU and puts it on the same footing as financial reporting, including assurance. |
| ESRS — Delegated Regulation (EU) 2023/2772 | European Commission · July 2023 | The first set of European Sustainability Reporting Standards: the actual datapoints, by topic, that a CSRD report has to carry. |
| Revised ESRS — delegated act adopted 3 July 2026 | European Commission · July 2026 | Cuts mandatory datapoints by more than 60 per cent under the Omnibus simplification, expected to apply from financial year 2027. If you are planning against the 2023 set, read this first. |
| IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards — S1 and S2 | ISSB · June 2023 | The global baseline. S1 covers sustainability-related financial information generally, S2 climate specifically. Free registration gives access to both texts. |
| IFRS S2 Climate-related Disclosures | ISSB · June 2023 | Governance, strategy, risk management and metrics for climate, including the Scope 1, 2 and 3 disclosure requirements that most implementation work turns on. |
| Amendments to Greenhouse Gas Emissions Disclosures (Amendments to IFRS S2) | ISSB · December 2025 | Targeted reliefs on greenhouse-gas disclosure to ease application. Anyone citing IFRS S2 as issued in 2023 alone is now citing it incompletely. |
| Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 | European Union · June 2024 | The legal basis for the Digital Product Passport, plus ecodesign requirements by product group. Product-level evidence obligations start here. |
| Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism — Regulation (EU) 2023/956 | European Union · May 2023 | Embedded-emissions reporting and, in time, payment on imported goods. Relevant to any Indian exporter in cement, iron and steel, aluminium, fertilisers, electricity or hydrogen. |
| CBAM — Commission guidance and implementing material | European Commission · current | The operational layer above the regulation: reporting templates, transitional-period guidance and sector rules, updated as the mechanism phases in. |
Measurement and method
How a number is actually produced: what counts, which factor applies, where the boundary sits. Disclosure regulation almost always points here rather than defining method itself.
| Document | Issuer · date | What it governs |
|---|---|---|
| GHG Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard | WRI and WBCSD · revised 2004 | The accounting basis nearly every other framework defers to: organisational and operational boundaries, and the definition of Scopes 1, 2 and 3. |
| GHG Protocol Scope 2 Guidance | WRI and WBCSD · 2015 | Location-based and market-based methods for purchased electricity — the distinction behind most disputes about a renewable-energy claim. |
| Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard | WRI and WBCSD · 2011 | The fifteen Scope 3 categories and how to account for each. The standard that turns supplier evidence from a nicety into a requirement. |
| GHG Protocol Product Life Cycle Standard | WRI and WBCSD · 2011 | Cradle-to-grave accounting for a single product. Where product-level footprints and passport evidence begin. |
| GHG Protocol for Project Accounting | WRI and WBCSD · 2005 | Quantifying the effect of a specific mitigation project against a baseline — the logic underneath most reduction and offset claims. |
| 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories | IPCC · 2006 | The source of the default emission factors and tier methods that corporate factor libraries are ultimately built from. |
| 2019 Refinement to the 2006 IPCC Guidelines | IPCC · 2019 | Updated factors and methods, including substantial revisions for fugitive emissions and waste. Worth checking whenever a factor looks stale. |
| ISO 14064-1:2018 — organisation-level quantification and reporting | ISO · 2018 | The ISO route to an organisational inventory, used where a customer or regulator asks for ISO rather than GHG Protocol framing. |
| ISO 14064-2:2019 — project-level quantification | ISO · 2019 | Project-level reductions and removals, including monitoring and reporting requirements. |
| ISO 14067:2018 — carbon footprint of products | ISO · 2018 | Product carbon footprint quantification and reporting, frequently cited in customer requirements and in passport discussions. |
| Global GHG Accounting and Reporting Standard for the Financial Industry | PCAF · current edition | Financed emissions: how a lender or investor attributes a borrower's or investee's emissions to its own balance sheet, with data-quality scores per asset class. |
India
The rules that govern the records an Indian site already keeps. These are usually the strongest evidence available on a first pilot, because compliance has forced them to exist and be retained.
| Document | Issuer · date | What it governs |
|---|---|---|
| CO2 Baseline Database for the Indian Power Sector, Version 21.0 | Central Electricity Authority · December 2025 | The grid emission factors Indian Scope 2 calculations should use, by region and vintage. The single most-cited number we see people get wrong or leave three years out of date. |
| Perform, Achieve and Trade (PAT) scheme | Bureau of Energy Efficiency · current | Mandatory energy-intensity targets for designated consumers across industrial sectors, with tradable certificates. Where large plants already have audited energy data. |
| Bio-Medical Waste Management Rules, 2016 | CPCB · 2016, as amended | Segregation, storage, transport and manifest requirements for healthcare waste. Hospital waste figures are usually the best-evidenced numbers on a hospital site. |
| E-Waste (Management) Rules, 2022 | CPCB · 2022 | Extended producer responsibility, registration and recycling targets for electronics. The rules behind most data-centre and electronics disposal records. |
| Battery Waste Management Rules, 2022 | CPCB · 2022 | EPR for batteries, including recycled-content obligations that increasingly appear in customer and passport requirements. |
| Hazardous and Other Wastes (Management and Transboundary Movement) Rules, 2016 | CPCB · 2016, as amended | Authorisation, manifest and disposal requirements for hazardous waste streams — the paper trail behind industrial waste figures. |
| EPR guidelines under the E-Waste Management Rules | CPCB · August 2025 | Operational guidance for producers on the EPR portal, targets and certificates — the layer that decides what a compliance record actually looks like. |
| CPCB e-waste portal and registrations | CPCB · current | Registered producers, recyclers and dismantlers. Useful for checking whether a waste handler named on a manifest is authorised. |
| CPCB technical guidelines | CPCB · current | Sector and stream-specific technical guidance, including monitoring and measurement expectations that shape what a site records. |
| Central Pollution Control Board | CPCB · current | The parent source for consent conditions, standards and state-board rules. State boards add their own requirements above these, so check both. |
Assurance and audit practice
What a professional actually applies when asked to give an opinion on a sustainability figure. Worth reading even if you never commission assurance, because it tells you what evidence will be asked for.
| Document | Issuer · date | What it governs |
|---|---|---|
| ISSA 5000 — General Requirements for Sustainability Assurance Engagements | IAASB · approved 2024, effective 15 December 2026 | The first global standard written specifically for sustainability assurance. Framework-neutral, covers both limited and reasonable assurance, and usable by non-accountant practitioners. |
| ISSA 5000 — final pronouncement (full text) | IAASB · 2025 | The standard itself. Read the evidence and documentation requirements if you want to know what an assurer will ask a preparer to produce. |
| ISSA 5000 adoption and implementation | IAASB · current | Jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction adoption status and implementation material, including how ISSA 5000 maps onto EU requirements. |
| ISAE 3000 (Revised) | IAASB · 2013 | The general assurance standard used for sustainability engagements until ISSA 5000 takes over. Most assurance statements issued to date cite it. |
| ISAE 3410 — assurance on a greenhouse gas statement | IAASB · 2012, to be withdrawn 15 December 2026 | The GHG-specific assurance standard, being retired as ISSA 5000 becomes effective. Useful for reading historical assurance statements, and a date to have in the diary. |
| ISO 14064-3:2019 — verification and validation of GHG statements | ISO · 2019 | The ISO route to verification, common where a verification body rather than an audit firm is engaged, and the basis of many accredited schemes. |
How to use this
If you are starting a disclosure programme, read in this order: the regulation that applies to you, then the method standard it defers to, then the assurance standard whoever checks your figures will apply. Most programmes are built in the opposite order — a reporting tool first, method later, evidence never — which is why the evidence question surfaces late and expensively.
If you are preparing for a first pilot, the India section is the more useful half. Records that exist because a rule requires them tend to be complete, retained and defensible in a way that voluntary data collection rarely is, which is why an evidence programme usually starts there. What that looks like in practice is on how we work, and the vocabulary is in the glossary.
Links checked September 2026. Documents are the copyright of their issuers and are linked, not hosted; several require registration or purchase. Framework and standard names are used for identification only, and EcoVeraZ is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or accredited under any of these bodies. Nothing here is legal or professional advice. EcoVeraZ is not an ESG rating agency and does not issue assurance opinions.
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