GRI, ISSB and ESRS compared — and where BRSR fits

Indian companies with international investors, EU customers or global parents are increasingly asked for more than their BRSR. The three frameworks they meet most — GRI, the ISSB standards and the EU's ESRS — overlap a great deal, but they answer different questions. This guide compares them as they stand in October 2026.

What question does each framework answer?

GRI: impacts first

GRI's Universal Standards (GRI 1, 2 and 3), in effect since 2023, ask a company to identify its material topics — "topics that represent the organization's most significant impacts on the economy, environment, and people"¹ — and then report on each with topic standards.

Two topic standards change on 1 January 2027: GRI 102: Climate Change replaces disclosures 305-1 to 305-5 (emissions) and 201-2 (climate risks), and GRI 103: Energy replaces GRI 302. Both apply to reports published from that date; earlier use is encouraged². GRI 102 covers Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions, removals and carbon credits.

ISSB: what matters to investors

The International Sustainability Standards Board issued IFRS S1 (general requirements) and IFRS S2 (climate) in June 2023, for periods from 1 January 2024. IFRS S2 requires Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions (location-based Scope 2, with relief from Scope 3 in the first year), climate-related risks and opportunities, climate resilience assessed with scenario analysis, and information about any transition plan the company has¹⁰.

In December 2025 the ISSB amended IFRS S2, from 1 January 2027: financial institutions may limit Scope 3 category 15 to financed emissions; any suitable industry classification may replace GICS; the existing relief for a GHG measurement method a jurisdiction requires now also applies where it covers only part of the entity; and a new relief allows GWP values a jurisdiction requires⁴.

By September 2026, more than 45 jurisdictions were adopting or otherwise using the ISSB standards⁵. India was not among them. India's mandatory regime remains BRSR and BRSR Core. The Institute of Cost Accountants of India has issued ISS 1 and ISS 2, standards carved out of IFRS S1 and S2⁹; we found no regulator that has made them mandatory.

ESRS: double materiality, now with a smaller scope

The European Sustainability Reporting Standards apply under the EU's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive. They require double materiality: a topic is material if the company has significant impacts on it, or if it significantly affects the company — or both.

The EU narrowed the CSRD sharply in 2025-26. Directive (EU) 2026/470⁶ limits it, from financial year 2027, to companies with more than 1,000 employees and over €450 million net turnover, and non-EU groups with more than €450 million of EU turnover and an EU subsidiary or branch above €200 million. It keeps limited assurance only, removes listed SMEs, and caps what in-scope companies can demand from smaller companies in their value chain.

The ESRS themselves were revised and cut: the Commission adopted the revised standards in July 2026⁷, and they were published in September 2026 as Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/1563¹¹ — mandatory for financial years beginning on or after 1 January 2027, with companies free to use them for 2026.

How do they connect?

The frameworks have built bridges, but each bridge covers specific disclosures, not whole reports:

• GRI and the ISSB: GRI's standards board accepts IFRS S2's Scope 1, 2 and 3 disclosures as meeting GRI 102's, provided they are measured under the GHG Protocol (2004) and cross-referenced in the GRI content index³.
• GRI and ESRS: EFRAG and GRI stated in 2023 a "high level of interoperability", with a company reporting under ESRS considered to be reporting "with reference to" the GRI Standards⁸. That statement covers the original ESRS; we found no update yet for the revised ones.
• BRSR and the rest: BRSR allows cross-references to reports under other frameworks, and its environmental indicators use the same building blocks — Scope 1 and 2 under the GHG Protocol, energy, water, waste — but its format, units (for example, intensity per rupee of turnover adjusted for PPP) and boundary rules are its own.

Why one report rarely satisfies them all

Take one figure — Scope 1 emissions — that every framework asks for:

The figure can often be the same number. The surrounding requirements — boundary, comparatives, intensity denominators, assurance — are not. A mapping shows where one figure answers several requirements; it does not make a report compliant with any of them.

Where to start

1. Do BRSR well first. For India's top 1,000 listed companies it is mandatory, and its data — energy, emissions, water, waste, people — is the base the others draw on.
2. Add what your audiences actually ask for. Investor questionnaires usually follow IFRS S2 or CDP (whose questionnaire is aligned with IFRS S2); EU customers ask for product or value chain data; a global parent sets its own framework.
3. Keep one dataset. Collect each figure once, with its evidence, and map it — so a correction in one place is a correction everywhere.

How ESGTrack helps

ESGTrack prepares BRSR and BRSR Core, the ISSB's IFRS S1 and S2, a GRI content index, CDP climate figures ready to copy into CDP's portal, and CSRD/ESRS on the ESRS adopted in 2023 (usable for 2026; the revised ESRS are shown as a regulatory update) from the same approved data, and its crosswalk shows how each figure maps across frameworks — with the relationship of each mapping (equivalent, converted, partial or only related) and its limits. See frameworks in ESGTrack.