Integrating nature into your strategy

Recorded on Wednesday 18 September

We brought together leading voices in the nature research and disclosure sector to understand why your business should be measuring and reporting on nature and how you can start to take action. In addition to this, the panelists compared climate and nature reporting, how simple it is to find the data you need and how interoperable the various nature reporting frameworks are.

The webinar ended with a Q&A session where audience questions were answered live by the panel.

This webinar coincided with the launch of Natcap's new TNFD Preparedness Assessment Tool and TNFD Whitepaper.

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We summarised a few of the topics covered below:

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Taking nature out of the "too difficult" bucket

For a long time measuring and understanding nature has been seen as a big task, requiring a lot of hard-to-find data. Professor Kathy Willis and David Craig both argue that we have all the data we need and that the time has come to change the conversation around nature disclosure. Kathy comments:

There are only 5 or 6 key things we're trying to look at here. We're trying to look at pollution, we're trying to look at water, we're trying to look at soil erosion, we're trying to look at rare, threatened and endangered species, and we're trying to look at the health benefits from nature. Those are the five societal benefits we need to be thinking about.

These topics align with what frameworks, like TNFD and CSRD, ask organisations to understand about their impacts and dependencies on nature. TNFD's LEAP approach, for example, is specific guidance help sustainability analysts locate, evaluate, assess and prepare to report on their interface with nature. You can learn more here.

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Bringing the frameworks together

With so many voluntary and mandatory frameworks in existence, there is open discussion about which is most important to follow. Should organisations only comply with mandatory disclosures or opt in to more detailed voluntary ones? If we look at previous examples of climate reporting and, more recently, Biodiversity Net Gain in the UK being made mandatory, we might assume that an overarching standard will be adopted by policy makers. David adds:

The timing is an important part of the equation. We (TNFD) follow in the footsteps of our cousin TCFD created eight years ago, before the ISSB existed. Now the ISSB has gathered that into a global standard. They have announced that they are working now on nature, they are looking at and reflecting on the work of the TNFD, and what I would say to everyone, is they will be consulting the market to say "what should we do and how should we approach this?". Well, the more people that are using TNFD, which is designed by the market, and designed to be practical and scientifically robust, the more they will incorporate that into that standard.

Earlier this year TNFD released interoperability guidance between their recommendations and the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) that sit under CSRD. As well as a mapping resource that gives a detailed overview of alignment between the TNFD Disclosure Recommendations and metrics and the GRI Standards. David goes on to say how the simpler we make reporting on nature, the better outcomes we can create for nature.

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Making scenario analysis practical

While broad quantitative scenario and risk analysis is crucial to objectively understanding the probability and potential impact of nature-related risk, it also has flaws.

Will Evison, from PwC UK, says in a corporate setting

it's often focused around individual risks and is often quite bespoke. On the one hand I'm saying, yes it will make sense to have these broader normative scenarios defined; on the other hand, the practical utility in the short-term of scenario analysis comes from understanding a specific risk and digging into that specific risk. When ever you're quantifying the potential impact of a risk, you're effectively thinking about a scenario. But you're doing it on the basis of a discrete risk, and that's where I've seen companies have succeeded in getting meaningful results that are then informing strategy.

This is the benefit of honing in on an organisation's specific risks.

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Thank you to our panelists for joining and engaging in such a rich and engaging discussion on one of the most important topics of out time.

Beccy Wilebore, Chief Science Officer, Natcap

David Craig, Co-chair, TNFD

Baroness Kathy Willis, Professor of Biodiversity, University of Oxford

Will Evison, Global Director, Climate & Nature Strategy, PWC UK

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Thanks to everyone who attended live and for the insightful questions posed.

You can watch the full webinar above.