Insights

Glossary

Clear definitions of the sustainability, climate, and ESG terms that matter most — from CBAM and CSRD to SBTi and PCAF. Written by Semtrio's advisory team.

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Impact Materiality

Impact materiality is the assessment of how significantly an organisation's activities affect people and the environment — the outward-looking half of double materiality, judged on the severity and likelihood of the impact rather than on any financial consequence to the organisation.

Integrated Reporting

Integrated reporting is an approach to corporate reporting that presents financial and sustainability performance in a single connected narrative, explaining how an organisation creates value over the short, medium and long term.

International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB)

The ISSB is the standard-setting body that develops the IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards, established by the IFRS Foundation to give investors a single global baseline for sustainability reporting.

ISO 14001

ISO 14001 is the international standard for environmental management systems, specifying the requirements an organisation must meet to manage its environmental responsibilities systematically and improve performance over time.

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Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)

A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a systematic, ISO-standardized method for quantifying the environmental impacts of a product, service, or process across its entire life cycle — from raw material extraction through production, use, and end of life — providing the methodological foundation for Product Carbon Footprints, Environmental Product Declarations, and CBAM embedded emissions calculations.

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Materiality Assessment

A materiality assessment is the structured process by which an organisation determines which sustainability topics are significant enough to manage, disclose and resource — and which are not.

Minimum Safeguards

Minimum safeguards are the social conditions an economic activity must meet to qualify as EU Taxonomy-aligned, requiring alignment with international standards on human rights, labour, corruption, taxation and fair competition.

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Nature-based Solutions (NbS)

Nature-based solutions are actions to protect, conserve, restore or sustainably manage ecosystems that address societal challenges effectively while simultaneously benefiting biodiversity and human wellbeing.

Have a question we haven't defined yet?

If you're working through a regulatory framework or sustainability challenge and need clarity on a specific term or concept — our team is here to help directly.