In early 2024, over 320 organisations spanning 46 countries made a public commitment to adopting the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) recommendations into their corporate reporting.
The recommendations, published in 2023, are designed to guide companies on how to identify, assess and report on their nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks and opportunities. A core aim of the TFND is to facilitate consistency in corporate nature-related reporting and disclosure. There are significant challenges in establishing a globally consistent approach to nature-related reporting, such as the difficulty in measuring nature-related impacts.
That’s where CSIRO Nature IQ comes in. The platform offers a powerful solution for natural capital accounting. It combines multiple CSIRO environmental indicators, models and geospatial datasets into a single product for a comprehensive view of impacts on biodiversity.
Importantly, CSIRO Nature IQ aligns with the TFND recommendations. Should these become mandatory, organisations can have confidence that the data they obtain through CSIRO Nature IQ will ensure they meet requirements.
The TNFD Recommendations were developed on the basis of seven principles
The CSIRO Nature IQ platform has been designed to align with the TFND principles in the following ways:
Market usability
Directly usable and valuable to market participants, notably corporates and financial institutions, as well as policy and other actors.
- The platform provides actionable data, metrics, and analysis on any organisation’s nature-related impacts, dependencies and risks. These have been specifically designed for use in natural capital accounting and assessment.
Science-based
Follow a scientifically anchored approach, incorporate well established and emerging scientific evidence, and converge towards other existing science-based initiatives.
- The platform leverages well-established scientific datasets and models for biodiversity mapping, habitat modelling and extinction risk analysis. Its outputs are quantitative and rooted in CSIRO’s proven ecological research.
Nature-related risks
Embrace nature-related risks that include immediate and material financial risks, as well as nature dependencies and impacts and their related organisational and societal risks.
- The platform's core capabilities revolve around quantifying impacts on nature, evaluating dependencies and estimating biodiversity persistence - all key lenses for identifying nature-related risks.
Purpose driven
Actively reducing risks and increasing nature-positive action by using the minimum required level of granularity to ensure achievement of the TNFD goal.
- By providing granular, asset-level data, CSIRO Nature IQ allows organisations to zoom in on their highest risk locations and accurately estimate the effectiveness of different mitigation actions. It’s the precise level of detail needed to drive effective risk reduction and nature-positive actions.
Integrated and adaptive
Can be integrated into and enhance existing disclosures and other standards. Account for and be adaptive to changes in national and international policy commitments, standards and market conditions.
- The platform’s data can integrate seamlessly with existing climate and sustainability reporting workflows and disclosures. Its user-friendly geospatial visualisations make these insights highly accessible.
Climate-nature nexus
Employ an integrated approach to climate- and nature-related risks, scaling up finance for nature-based solutions.
- The platform analyses climate change effects on habitats and ecosystems and nature's role in climate resilience such as flood mitigation.
Globally inclusive
Ensure the framework and approach is relevant and accessible worldwide, across emerging and developed markets.
- While CSIRO Nature IQ is currently focused on the Australian market, it has been designed to scale globally.
Aligning Nature IQ with the TNFD requirements
The TNFD aims to bring consistency, rigour and global alignment to corporate nature-related disclosure practices across four pillars, governance, strategy, risk management and metrics and targets. CSIRO Nature IQ aligns with these four pillars in the following ways:
Governance
The platform's robust analytics, scenario analysis and risk/opportunity identification enable organisations to exercise effective oversight. Relevant features include:
- Geospatial mapping of locations to identify which are the most ecologically important
- Views of insights for an individual locations as well as holistic views of all locations managed or owned by the organisation
- comply with existing and emerging regulations related to nature and environmental issues.
Strategy
By quantifying environmental dependencies, impacts and strategic risks in granular detail, the platform delivers insights at the right level for strategy. Relevant features include:
- analysis of key business dependencies on nature.
- assessment of impact of business activities on natural habitats and species diversity.
- scenario planning to understand the extent to which different actions, such as habitat restoration, could protect biodiversity
- forecasting long-term risks to biodiversity and ecosystem services that the organisation depends on
Risk Management
Comprehensive risk identification, assessment and monitoring are cornerstones of the TNFD recommendations. The platform helps organisations manage risk through features and metrics such as:
- habitat condition modelling to identify which locations are facing degradation threats that could disrupt the organisation's dependencies
- the biodiversity persistence metric which highlights locations where high extinction risk translates into potential disruptions to operations
- threatened species habitat analysis identified vulnerabilities that need risk responses.
Metrics and Targets
The TNFD emphasises science-based target setting. The platforms’ scenario planning tools allow organisations to:
- set and track targets aligned to global policy goals and TFND core metrics
- monitor performance against location-specific biodiversity targets over time
While nature-related disclosure is currently voluntary, that’s likely to change. Companies need to start preparing now to disclose and report in line with the TFND recommendations.
The recommendations give businesses and investors a shared approach to reporting and disclosure, and a shared path forward for preserving and restoring nature and biodiversity.
By consolidating biodiversity data, models and scenarios into a single, integrated platform, CSIRO Nature IQ equips organisations with comprehensive capabilities for TNFD-aligned disclosure. The platform’s scientific rigour gives any organisation the confidence that their reporting will be accurate, precise and credible.
As investors and regulators look for evidence that organisations are taking meaningful action to address biodiversity loss and other nature-related risks, platforms like CSIRO Nature IQ have a crucial role to play.