The UK government should publish an updated National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plans (NBSAP) setting out how it will deliver on international nature goals through disclosures, a report has found.
The country should set out how it will deliver on commitments, under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), on areas including disclosure policy, setting economic strategies, and fiscal decision-making, a Transition Plan Taskforce (TPT) working group report said this week.
The government set up the TPT in 2022 to advise on its transition to a lower-carbon future. TPT’s nature working group published the report to inform the group how to integrate nature into planning.
The report marked a “critical step forwards” in enabling nature relationships – such as the impacts of mining on land use change – to integrate into climate transition plans using the TPT Disclosure Framework, the working group said.
Only a handful of regions have fulfilled their commitment under the COP15 final agreement to updating their NBSAP since 2022, including the EU, China and Japan. Last June, the UK said it would publish its plan by summer 2024.
The TPT group proposed actions for the UK in its NBSAP included implementing mandatory Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD)-aligned disclosures.
“UK government, technical bodies and business should collaborate on a disclosure framework that integrates climate and nature transition planning guidance, in a format which can be used within a regulatory approach,” it said.
It also said the plan should include:
- A staged approach to nature disclosures, with interim milestones
- An international engagement plan
- The translation of GBF targets into a national strategy with business implications
“Given climate change is only one of five drivers of nature loss as identified by the tenth session of the Plenary of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), a climate-centric lens alone will not be sufficient to halt and reverse the nature crisis.”
The rationale for nature in transition planning should be based in the benefits and costs of acting on nature for an individual business, it said.
Businesses with products that can demonstrate positive nature impacts stand to benefit from growing demand from nature-conscious consumers, it added.
By Thomas Cox – t.cox@carbon-pulse.com
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