The Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) has sought feedback on its discussion paper outlining a roadmap to accessing high-quality, decision-useful nature data – the goal of which is to help empower corporates and financial institutions to understand their nature-related dependencies and impacts.
Climateworks believes that protecting and restoring nature is critical to achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions targets because action on climate change and creating resilient ecosystems are deeply intertwined.
Over the past six years, we have focused on embedding the concept of natural capital in decision-making, and specifically the measurement and valuation of environmental ‘assets’ as an important enabler of increasing sustainable land use.
This work is being conducted through our Natural Capital Investment Initiative (NCII) a key part of which is the development of the Natural Capital Measurement Catalogue (NCMC).
Climateworks strongly supports the work of the TNFD to empower corporates and financial institutions to understand their nature-related dependencies and impacts and to enhance market access to accessible, high-quality, consistent, decision-useful nature-related data to contribute to nature-positive outcomes and boost the resilience of their business by investing in the resilience of nature.
The discussion paper is excellent.
It provides a well-thought-out review of the market needs for nature-related data and a viable roadmap for further action to meet those needs.
As an organisation that has been actively involved in addressing barriers to the inclusion of natural capital considerations in decision-making for the past six years, Climateworks wholeheartedly supports the paper’s analysis and proposed next steps.
The roadmap’s ambition complements Climateworks’ work in Australia through the Natural Capital Investment Initiative, which aims to drive consistency in natural capital measurement and embed the value of nature in public and private decision-making.
Our response is therefore limited to highlighting two key areas where we believe that our experience would be a valuable addition to the existing body of knowledge encapsulated in the discussion paper.
We recommend the TNFD reference the NCMC:
- to inform the proposed Nature Data Public Facility (NPDF) pilots so that metrics included in the pilots can easily be cross-referenced against other similar metrics
- to assess the current state of nature-related data as regionally relevant to Australia. It will also help identify gaps and variations between available data and proposed metrics.
More detail on our recommendations can be found in the submission [PDF 0.4mb].
