Biodiversity Reporting Simplified : Introduction
Our business tips are designed to educate and empower our business community and this week we look at the latest information on biodiversity reporting. We aim to help you make positive, sustainable changes that benefit both your business and the environment.
This week, we’re focusing on a significant development in sustainability reporting. It’s a new resource from the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD). This resource simplifies biodiversity reporting, ensuring that businesses can align their sustainability efforts with global standards.
Read on to understand the benefits and practical applications of this important tool.
Understanding the GRI and TNFD Collaboration on Biodiversity Reporting
Over the past two years, GRI and TNFD have worked closely together to support the development of each other’s guidelines. This collaboration has led to the creation of a joint resource that helps businesses align their sustainability reporting with both GRI Standards and TNFD Recommendations.
The new resource includes a detailed table to help GRI’s 14,000 reporters globally align with TNFD Recommendations. It also aids TNFD Adopters in their sustainability reporting according to GRI Standards. This alignment shows how closely TNFD Recommendations and GRI Standards reporting requirements match.
Key Features of the New Biodiversity Reporting Resource
1. Consistent Nature-Related Concepts
The new tool uses consistent nature-related concepts and definitions, including the five main drivers of nature and biodiversity loss, as defined by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).
This consistency helps businesses understand and address the primary causes of biodiversity loss, ensuring their reports are aligned with global standards. Additionally, this common language facilitates better communication and comparison across organisations, making it easier for stakeholders to assess biodiversity impacts effectively.
2. Materiality Approach
The TNFD Recommendations include GRI’s approach to materiality, focusing on impacts. This means businesses can report on the most significant environmental impacts they have, ensuring their efforts are directed where they matter most.
TNFD’s flexible approach to materiality helps organisations report both impact and financial materiality, allowing them to present a comprehensive picture of their sustainability performance. This dual focus ensures that both environmental and financial impacts are considered, making the reports more relevant for a broad range of stakeholders.
3. Comprehensive Disclosures
All disclosures in GRI 101: Biodiversity 2024 are reflected in the TNFD Recommendations, ensuring that companies do not need to duplicate their reporting efforts. This comprehensive coverage means that businesses can confidently use these guidelines to meet multiple reporting requirements simultaneously.
All TNFD Recommendations, except those specifically about nature-related risk and opportunity identification, are included in the GRI Standards. This integration simplifies the reporting process and ensures consistency across different frameworks, making it easier for businesses to manage their reporting obligations.
4. Consistency in Metrics
The TNFD core global disclosure metrics align with the related metrics in the GRI Standards, providing a cohesive set of data points for businesses to use. This consistency helps organisations streamline their data collection and reporting processes, reducing the administrative burden.
The new tool also shows consistency between TNFD sector metrics and relevant GRI Sector Standards, which means that industry-specific nuances are captured accurately. This alignment ensures that businesses can report sector-specific data in a way that is consistent with broader sustainability standards.
5. TNFD LEAP Approach
The TNFD LEAP approach helps identify and assess nature-related issues. It is referenced in GRI 101 and helps pinpoint significant biodiversity impacts and measure changes in the state of nature. This approach provides a clear methodology for businesses to follow, ensuring that they can identify the most critical biodiversity issues and track their progress over time.
By using the LEAP approach, companies can develop targeted strategies to mitigate their environmental impacts and enhance their sustainability performance. This structured approach helps businesses systematically address biodiversity risks and opportunities, making their sustainability efforts more effective and impactful.
Why this Resource Benefits Play It Green Business Members
This new resource from TNFD and GRI simplifies biodiversity reporting for businesses. It provides a clear, practical framework. Furthermore, it helps companies streamline their reporting processes. By doing so companies avoid double reporting and ensure transparent and accountable disclosure of their impacts. This alignment is crucial for businesses that need or want to report on their nature-related dependencies and impacts.
Expert Insights on the New Biodiversity Reporting Resource
Bastian Buck, Chief Standards Officer at GRI
“The ongoing collaboration of GRI with the TNFD has resulted in this detailed mapping tool, supporting thousands of organisations worldwide that already report their biodiversity impacts using the GRI Standards. This resource enables them to seamlessly integrate the TNFD recommendations, allowing for simplified, single-source reporting.”
Esther An, Chief Sustainability Officer of City Developments Limited
“Nature risks are business risks that should be measured and disclosed in a more robust manner. Having adopted the GRI 304: Biodiversity (2016) since 2017 and as the first Singapore company to publish disclosures aligned with the TNFD Recommendations in 2024, CDL understands the importance of measuring and managing our nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks, and opportunities for long-term resilience.”
Tony Goldner, Executive Director of the TNFD
“The release of today’s mapping from GRI and the TNFD will further support market participants needing, or wanting, to report on their nature-related dependencies and impacts leveraging GRI Standards and metrics and in line with the TNFD Recommendations.”
Biodiversity Reporting: Wrap Up
The new resource from GRI and TNFD marks a significant advancement in sustainability reporting. It aligns with the TNFD Recommendations and with GRI Standards. Accordingly, it provides a streamlined approach for businesses to report on biodiversity and nature-related impacts. This alignment not only simplifies reporting processes but also ensures comprehensive and transparent disclosure, ultimately supporting businesses in their sustainability journeys.
For further reading on how you can implement these changes, check out:
Play It Green: The Best £5 per Month You'll Spend
Take your business and personal wellbeing to the next level with Play It Green.
Every £5 in your subscription plants 10 trees and regifts 50p to your chosen charity. Furthermore. we also provide you with weekly education and tools to reduce your personal and business emissions. Helping you to get to net zero, we’ll give you the plan, the marketing content and the ongoing support to ensure you get to where you need to be.
The Play It Green platform allows you to plant a tree with every sale or can signpost you to a Carbon Footprint Report and other providers. Incredibly, our service is taken by G4S, Manchester Central and Shires PLC amongst many others. At £5 per person per month what is stopping you?
