'Milestone': Taskforce For Nature-related Financial Disclosures Publishes Final Recommendations

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The Taskforce for Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) has published its final recommendations for how large businesses and financial firms should publicly report on nature-related risks, heralding the launch as a “key milestone in the relationship between nature, business and financial capital.”

The recommendations are the result of two years of consultations and extensive pilot testing, during which business and investor awareness of nature-related risks rose sharply and governments signed a landmark pact pledging to preserve 30 percent of land and sea for nature by 2030.

The 14 recommendations, modeled on the Taskforce for Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), provide a framework that can help organizations manage and report on their nature-related impacts and dependencies in a standardized manner that can be better assessed by investors, regulators and civil society.

Under the TNFD guidelines, companies and large financial institutions are advised to describe their governance of nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks and opportunities, and the effects they have on the organization’s business model, strategy and financial planning.

Businesses are also called upon to disclose the metrics and targets they use to assess and manage material nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks and opportunities, and describe the processes used by the organization to identify, assess, prioritize and monitor nature-related issues.

The hope is that, like the TCFD, disclosures on nature-related risks and opportunities will help shape better decision making within companies while also providing investors with greater clarity on the nature-related risks they are facing.

“Nature loss is accelerating, and businesses today are inadequately accounting for nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks and opportunities,” said David Craig, co-chair of the TNFD. “Nature risk is sitting in company cash flows and capital portfolios today. The costs of inaction are mounting quickly. Businesses and financial institutions now have the tools they need to take action.

“Building on the language, structure and approach of the TCFD and consistent with the ISSB’s sustainability reporting baseline, the adoption of the TNFD Recommendations represent a step-change in the momentum and capacity for business and finance to identify, assess and disclose their exposure to nature-related issues in a manner consistent with climate-related-reporting.”

The TNFD said the recommendations were consistent with existing and emerging International Financial Reporting Standards and Global Reporting Standards and would help government signatories of the Global Biodiversity Framework signed in December in Montreal meet their pledge to require large firms to disclose nature-related risks by 2030.

French President Emmanuel Macron welcomed the launch of the TNFD. “Nature provides irreplaceable services to societies and businesses,” he said. “I applaud the TNFD’s efforts in publishing today a framework that can be utilized to identify, assess, manage and disclose dependencies and impacts on nature, as well as risks and opportunities for organizations.”

At a launch event for the TNFD this week at the New York Stock Exchange, pharmaceutical giant GSK became the first corporate to officially announce it would publish disclosures in line with the TNFD recommendations.

“Protecting nature makes our business more resilient and helps us deliver for patients by ensuring the supply of raw materials needed to manufacture vital medicines and vaccines,” said Julie Brown, chief financial officer at GSK. “That’s why we’re proud to be a member of the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures. We have started to implement the TNFD methodology to better understand our nature-related risks and opportunities and are committed to publish our first TNFD disclosures from 2026, based on 2025 data. “

A list of companies that have indicated their intention to adopt the recommendations will be published in January at the World Economic Forum at Davos.

Elizabeth Mrema, co-chair of the TNFD, deputy executive director of UNEP and former executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity Secretariat, said scaling up action to protect nature was “business-critical” because biodiversity decline posed significant financial risks for businesses and investors.

“Increasingly extreme weather events, the collapse of ecosystems and the extinction of species presents physical risks to business,” she said. “Policy making and regulatory attention stemming from growing community concern about nature loss also creates elevated transition risks. Business as usual is no longer an option and business and finance can no longer consider nature and biodiversity as just a corporate social responsibility issue. It is now squarely a central and strategic risk management issue.”