Launch of Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures

A new global reporting framework measuring the biodiversity impacts of financial institutions and corporations has been launched in London this afternoon. The Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), modeled after the Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), is intended to help organisations report and act on nature-related risks and opportunities. The new body was earlier endorsed by the G7 Finance Ministers at their meeting last week.

Backed by French President Emmanuel Macron, the TNFD is a market-led initiative developed by an informal working group that included officials from BP Plc, Citigroup Inc. and the government of France. The TCND consists of about 30 members drawn from service providers, financial institutions and corporations from both developed and emerging markets. It will be co-chaired by Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, Executive Secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, and by David Craig, CEO of Refinitiv and Group Leader of Data & Analytics at the London Stock Exchange. The TNFD is expected to deliver its recommendations and framework in 2023.

Both the diversity and amount of living organisms are declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history. The most recent global assessment by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) found that over one million different species are now under threat and that the rate of species extinctions is accelerating, all of which is exacerbated by climate change.

Speaking at an online event launching the TNFD, co-chair David Craig emphasised that the TNFD will be a ‘coalition of the willing’. “This is not about standards,” he said. “It’s about getting everybody to organise around a common framework where we can understand those transmission links between nature and the financial system.” Craig also said that in order to succeed the framework must be simple, practical, repeatable, market led and open to all.

In a related event following the TNFD launch, the IPBES and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a co-sponsored ‘Workshop Report on Biodiversity and Climate Change‘. The peer-reviewed report summarises the results of a four-day workshop examining the synergies and trade-offs between biodiversity protection and climate change mitigation and adaptation. It finds that previous policies have considered biodiversity loss and climate change independently of each other, and that addressing the synergies between them would maximise the mitigation efforts of both. This is the first-ever collaboration between the two intergovernmental science-policy bodies.