The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), one of the leading organizations promoting standardized ESG reporting, and the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) announced today the publication of a joint interoperability mapping resource, a new guide aimed at helping companies looking to report on nature-related and biodiversity risks and impacts using both the GRI Standards and TNFD recommendations, and to avoid double reporting.

According to the GRI and TNFD, the publication of the resource was made in response to feedback from market participants, following the recent release by both organizations of new standards and recommendations for nature and biodiversity-related reporting.

Earlier this year, the GRI published “GRI 101: Biodiversity 2024,” a major update to its  Biodiversity Standard, aimed at enabling companies to publicly disclose on their most significant biodiversity impacts, and how they are managed.

The TNFD was launched in 2021, building on the success of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), to support organizations in reporting and acting on their nature-related risks. The organization published its final recommendations for nature-related risk management and disclosure in September 2023, centred around 14 recommended disclosures, aimed at helping inform better decision-making by companies and capital providers on nature and biodiversity-related risks, opportunities, dependencies and impacts.

Tony Goldner, Executive Director of the TNFD, said:

“The release of today’s mapping from GRI and the TNFD will further support market participants needing, or wanting, to report on their nature-related dependencies and impacts leveraging GRI Standards and metrics and in line with the TNFD Recommendations.”

The organizations noted that they worked together over the past two years on the development of the new standards and recommendations, and that the new mapping document indicating a high level of alignment between the resources.

Key elements of alignment highlighted by the GRI and TNFD include use of consistent nature-related concepts and definitions, the incorporation of GRI’s materiality approach focusing on impacts in the TNFD Recommendations and guidance, and strong consistency between the TNFD core global disclosure metrics and the related metrics in the GRI Standards. Additionally, all of the GRI biodiversity standard’s disclosures are reflected in the TNFD recommendations, and all of the TNFD recommendations, except those exclusively covering nature-related risk and opportunity identification and assessment, are reflected in the GRI Standards.

Bastian Buck, Chief Standards Officer at GRI, said:

“The ongoing collaboration of GRI with the TNFD has resulted in this detailed mapping tool, supporting thousands of organizations worldwide that already report their biodiversity impacts using the GRI Standards. This resource enables them to seamlessly integrate the TNFD recommendations, allowing for simplified, single-source reporting. GRI and the TNFD will continue to cooperate to prevent the need for double reporting and ensure organizations can transparently and accountably disclose their impacts.”