The report describes the research methodology and provides baseline data and preliminary findings from the initial stage of the research. It includes a literature review and insights on voluntary climate-related reporting in New Zealand to date.

The final report will be published in late 2025 and will examine published Climate Statements to assess the effectiveness of the Aotearoa New Zealand Climate-related Disclosure Framework in meeting its purposes. These are:

• to encourage entities to routinely consider the short, medium and long-term risks and opportunities that climate change presents for the activities of the entity or the entity's group
• to enable entities to show how they are considering risks and opportunities
• to enable investors and other stakeholders to assess the merits of how entities are considering those risks and opportunities

Key insights to date:

• Survey respondents ranked climate-related risks as highly important, almost on par with other financial risks. These risks are seen as becoming more important in the next one to five years.
• Respondents see many challenges with current climate related information in terms of reliability, quality and usefulness and believe the Disclosure Framework will improve reliability while providing material information.
• The most common challenges with climate-related disclosures currently are lack of reliable data and cost of producing such disclosures. Revealing commercially sensitive information and lack of board or stakeholder demand were less common issues.
• All the sections of the New Zealand climate standards are seen as important to decision making of responding entities.
• Most responding investors consider climate change across all their investments with the most important motivations being stakeholder demand, materiality to financial performance, ethical responsibility and improving investee climate actions.