Draft:Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures

The Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) is a multilateral organization producing a set of disclosure recommendations and guidance for business and financial actors in order to encourage and enable them to assess, report, and act on their nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks, and opportunities. Its goal is to "support a shift in global financial flows away from nature-negative outcomes and toward nature-positive outcomes, aligned with the Global Biodiversity Framework". It was formed to support processes under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), at global treaty designed to protect biodiversity. Whereas the main CBD process is focused on country level (public sector) National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAP), engagement of the private sector is needed too, and is the subject of TNFD's work. An underlying premise of TNFD' work is that in order to shift global financial flows in such a way to stop harming and start supporting nature, the cooperation of the private sector and not only government actors is required.

TNFD describes itself: "The Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) is a market-led, science-based and government-backed initiative providing organizations with the tools to act on evolving nature-related issues. It was launched in June 2021 with the support of the G20 Sustainable Finance Working Group and financial support from a number of governments and philanthropic foundations.

Despite ample precedents in carbon reporting, the newness of nature reporting necessitates tools such as those of the TNFD in order to support this private sector reporting and transition to nature-positive operations. In order to further the goals of the CBD (the conservation of biodiversity, the sustainable use of its components, and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from genetic resources), and GBF (shift global financial flows away from nature-negative outcomes and toward nature-positive outcomes) private sector companies and financial actors must take stock of their interactions with nature and chart a course toward nature positive outcomes. TNFD helps address the complexity and newness of this process by synthesizing best practices and procedures that these private sectors can follow to move forward on a voluntary basis.

Products of TNFD include various types of 'guidance' for assessing and managing nature impacts. For instance, tools such as the LEAP Approach, which helps actors get started on identifying and assessing nature-related issue. Additional guidance is broken down by sectors, biomes, value chains, etc. TNFD tools help companies first make internal assessments, then develop metrics to measure impacts and dependencies, publish reports disclosing these, set targets for improvement over time, implement changes and then track them. A key product of TNFD is the disclosure recommendations which help companies prepare reporting and also provide a common language structure and best practices that are mutually intelligible across organizations and aligned with the GBF and CBD. Lastly TNFD provides support in developing and accessing data necessary for reporting, and developing and executing 'transition plans' toward nature-positive operations.

TNFD Adopters are organizations that have committed to start making disclosures aligned with the TNFD Recommendations by 2025, with the earliest adopters having been announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2024. Over 500 organizations globally have committed to start reporting on their nature-related issues aligned with TNFD's recommendations. In addition, a group of over 1,600 organizations support the work of the Taskforce as institutional members of the TNFD Forum.

The Taskforce itself consists of 40 senior executives from a variety of sectors, generally in a sustainability-oriented positions within their leading global organizations (financial institutions, corporations, and service providers). Like many multilateral institutions, the administrative and operational aspects of the organization are managed by a 'Secretariat' which manages the actions and events of the organization and engagement with its Adopters, partners, and external organizations.

TNFD released new guidance at the World Biodiversity Summit at COP16 in Cali, Colombia, calling for 'Nature Transition Plans' to align with the GBF, and saying that plans should be aligned with the deadlines of halting and reversing biodiversity loss by 2030 and ‘put nature on a path to recovery by 2050’. It also proposed a free 'data facility' at the event, to support reporting and which would be free to use.