Glossary›Measurement and governance / Governance, board and directors›Management-level climate responsibility
Glossary term
Cluster E · E6
Tier 3
Management-level climate responsibility
Definition
Management-level climate responsibility identifies the roles below the board that own climate data, judgements and disclosures, and how they report upward. AASB S2 requires disclosure of whether the role is delegated to a specific management position or committee, how oversight is exercised over it, and whether management uses controls and procedures.
On this page
In practice
Paragraph 6(b) is the second half of the governance disclosure and it gets a fraction of the attention paragraph 6(a) gets, despite being the half that describes where the work actually happens.
It requires disclosure about management’s role in the governance processes, controls and procedures used to monitor, manage and oversee climate-related risks and opportunities, including whether the role is delegated to a specific management-level position or committee and how oversight is exercised over that position or committee.
Three practical consequences.
A named position, or a stated absence of one. The disclosure asks whether the role is delegated to a specific position or committee. The honest answer for many first-year private reporters is that responsibility sits with the CFO alongside everything else, with an analyst or financial controller doing the work. That is a disclosable answer. What is not disclosable is a job title that exists on an organisation chart and has no occupant.
Oversight of the delegate. The standard asks how oversight is exercised over the position or committee, which means the reporting line and the challenge mechanism, not just the appointment. A CFO who owns the disclosure and reports to a board that never questions it is described accurately by saying so.
Controls and procedures. The word “controls” appears in paragraph 6(b) and it is the bridge into the assurance conversation. Management’s controls over sustainability data are what reasonable assurance will test directly from each entity’s fourth reporting year. A first-year disclosure that describes controls management does not have is creating a problem three years out, and a disclosure that honestly describes a manual process being formalised is not a deficiency.
The single-point-of-failure problem. For a mid-market Australian group the emissions inventory is typically built by one person. That person holds the method, the assumptions and the undocumented decisions. The management responsibility disclosure is the place this becomes visible, and a board reading it carefully should ask the succession question: if this individual left in March, could the report be produced. If the answer is no, the disclosure is accurate but the entity has a reporting continuity risk it has just described in a public document.
What the assurer does with it
Management responsibility disclosures are inside the year-one limited assurance scope under ASSA 5010 paragraph 10(a)(i), because they are part of the paragraph 6 governance disclosures.
The assurer tests them through inquiry and documents. They ask the named individual what they do and compare the answer to the disclosure. They ask for the position description, the delegation and the reporting line. Where controls are described, they ask for evidence the control operated: a sign-off, a review record, an exception log.
This is the point where a limited assurance engagement quietly becomes useful to the entity. The assurer is not testing controls for reliance in year one, but the act of asking which controls exist produces a list of what does not, a full three years before reasonable assurance makes it expensive.
They accept a disclosure naming a position that matches a real role with a real position description and an evidenced reporting line. They reject a named committee with no terms of reference and no minutes, a described control with no evidence of operation, and a disclosure asserting management oversight where the only evidence is the annual report approval.
Commonly confused with
Board oversight under paragraph 6(a), which is the governance body’s role. The two are separate sub-requirements and entities regularly answer 6(a) thoroughly and 6(b) in a sentence. Also confused with internal controls over sustainability reporting, which is the control environment itself; this disclosure is about who is accountable for it.
Sources
1
2
ASSA 5010 Timeline for Audits and Reviews of Information in Sustainability Reports under the Corporations Act 2001
AUASB
Review status
Review required
Last reviewed
15 September 2026
Editorial pass, unsigned
Reviewer required
Company secretary or governance practitioner
Next scheduled review
1 July 2027
Part of
Cluster E, Measurement and governance / Governance, board and directors
10 terms on what the board must be able to evidence, what personal exposure directors carry, and how the audit and risk committee engages with the assurer. Governance disclosures sit inside the year-one assurance scope.
Related terms
The responsibility map that names the position this disclosure describes
The paragraph 6(a) half of the same governance disclosure
The control environment this role is accountable for
Related questions
How do we prepare for assurance without a sustainability team?
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You need three things and only one has to sit inside your business: someone to retrieve data from your own systems, someone who knows what evidence the assurance standard requires, and a governance record. The first is a retrieval task for finance, the second can be bought, and the third is a discipline rather than a headcount. A first-year filing is a defined project, which is why a permanent hire is usually the wrong first move.
What governance evidence does the assurance provider look for?
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Evidence that the governance you described actually happened: board and committee minutes and papers showing climate was considered, terms of reference allocating oversight, the delegation to management, and dated records of the decisions you disclose. Governance disclosures are assured from year one, so the paper trail matters immediately.
What does an assurance provider actually test in year one?
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In year one they test the disclosures inside the ASSA 5010 first-year scope: Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, governance disclosures, and specified strategy paragraphs on climate risks and opportunities. The work runs in a predictable order, from understanding your reporting process and your boundary, through sampling source documents and reperforming calculations, to written representations at the end.
Other terms in this cluster
Management-level climate responsibility