Researchers have pointed to what they regard as a significant omission in the draft Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) framework relating to extinction risk which they have raised with the body as part of submitted formal feedback.
Academics from the Queen Mary University of London told Carbon Pulse that the final TNFD draft which was released in March contains a major omission which they have requested to be addressed in the final guidance due later this year.
“[The] TNFD disregard impacts on species extinction risk … The fact that we are in an extinction crisis and need to reduce species extinction risks was the main reason why in the 1980s scientists got concerned about biodiversity in the first place,” they wrote in an email to Carbon Pulse.
“This blind spot therefore risks undermining the credibility of TNFD and the entire TNFD framework.”
The final recommendations are to be launched in September and the co-chair of the body has suggested he expects the final nature reporting recommendations will remain similar to the draft.
The cross-stakeholder body aims to steer businesses and financial organisations in calculating and reporting their dependencies and impacts on nature and the recommendations come in the wake of the historic agreement of the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) at the UN’s COP15 biodiversity negotiations in Montreal last December, which outlined 23 targets for the world to meet to address the nature crisis.
More than 200 companies are members of the taskforce and many are said to be conducting pilots on reporting their nature impacts already.
Researchers from the London-based university have argued that the draft form of the recommendations do not fully consider the goals of the GBF, given that the reduction of extinction risk is part of the main goals of the agreement but that it is not adequately quantified in the TNFD draft.
Queen Mary’s submission also expressed concern about “the persistent confusion” over the distinction between the impacts on species extinction risk, specifically corresponding to Target 4 of the GBF, and impacts on ecosystem extent and condition, addressed by GBF Targets 1-3.
“In fact, these are entirely different things,” they wrote, citing the minimal impact on an ecosystem of the loss of the final few in a species, but the huge consequence on the species itself.
Their feedback requested that any assessment of impacts therefore clearly distinguishes between species extinction risk and ecosystem impact, and argue that including “a consistent set of metrics of impacts on global species extinction risk” within the TNFD would not be too challenging given relative consensus among the ecologist community on what these should represent.
The formal feedback can be accessed here.
By Roy Manuell – roy@carbon-pulse.com
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