The Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) and the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) have announced they are tightening their collaboration to better support corporate nature and biodiversity reporting.

TNFD and GRI will publish a document mapping out their interoperability before the end of June with detail on their alignment, following feedback, they said in a press release.

The further collaboration between GRI and TNFD is significant because it comes at a time of increased demands for companies to demonstrate transparency for their impacts on nature, said Eelco van der Enden, CEO of GRI.

“Occasionally you will hear: ‘I can stop using GRI because there is TNFD’, or the other way around, which is not the case. They are on the same topic, but they are different – one is a framework, the other is a translation into the standard,” said van der Enden in response to a question from Carbon Pulse during a webinar.

“That is very important to understand and through this cooperation, we have clarified that. Already we have been able to avoid some misunderstandings being translated into activities in some regions where [stopping GRI or TNFD disclosure] was suggested.”

The organisations are two of the most influential voluntary biodiversity disclosure initiatives. Some 360 organisations have committed to aligning disclosures with TNFD’s recommendations, approximately 40 more than in January, TNFD said.

However, the GRI is more established than TNFD, with its standards the most widely used for sustainability reporting in general. GRI updated its biodiversity standards in January.

Alignment of biodiversity disclosures is becoming increasingly important as it affects comparability of biodiversity data, with actors saying more alignment means greater transparency.

GUIDELINES COMING

The mapping tool shows the connections between TNFD and GRI to reveal how they correspond, said Elodie Chen, senior manager of sustainability standards at GRI.

“There has been so much interest and requests to have such a tool,” said Chen.

The initiatives will also release joint guidelines and case studies on the links between nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks, and opportunities.

The guidelines will support the use of the TNFD’s Locate, Evaluate, Assess, and Prepare (LEAP) approach, which already incorporates GRI approaches to materiality guidance for impact.

“Thousands of organisations globally that already report their material nature-related impacts through the use of GRI’s standards are now well-positioned to start making disclosures aligned to the TNFD recommendations,” van der Enden said.

“Our ongoing collaboration with TNFD will enable other GRI reporters to start their TNFD aligned reporting.”

TNFD and GRI have worked together over the last two years to try to align on language, the five direct drivers of nature loss, and the LEAP approach.

“GRI’s experience over several decades on impact assessment and reporting has been instrumental in informing the approach and recommendations now published by the TNFD,” Tony Goldner, executive director of TNFD, said.

“We’re seeing a huge amount of demand for briefings on how the various standards and frameworks in the landscape align. The whole purpose of publishing this alignment document in the next few weeks is precisely to inform the market and address those perceptions,” said Goldner, in response to a question from Carbon Pulse.

This week, a report published by the EU Business & Biodiversity (B&B) Platform flagged the differences between the most prominent biodiversity disclosure initiatives.

Johan Lammerant, lead author of the report and lead expert in natural capital at Arcadis, said GRI has a “major difference” from TNFD and the biodiversity standards of the European Sustainability Reporting Standard (ESRS) as GRI focuses on “not risk and impact management, but only impact management”.

By Thomas Cox – t.cox@carbon-pulse.com

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