The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) are working to deepen their collaboration, with an interoperability mapping document expected to arrive during Q2 of 2024.
Responding to feedback from both TNFD Forum member organisations and GRI Community members, both institutions are working on the mapping document to provide a detailed overview of alignment between the TNFD disclosure recommendation, released in September 2023, and the recently published GRI 101: Biodiversity 2024 standard.
They are also working on providing Illustrative joint case studies and guidelines on the links between nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks and opportunities. This will support the use of the TNFD’s LEAP assessment, which already incorporates the approaches to materiality guidance from GRI (for impact) and the International Financial Reporting Standards (for risks and opportunities).
Over the past two years, the TNFD and GRI have worked closely to support the development of each other’s respective recommendations, standards and guidance. Notably, GRI contributed to the TNFD Recommendations and the TNFD collaborated with GRI on its GRI 101: Biodiversity 2024 standard, which was updated to align with the TNFD Recommendations.
Eelco van der Enden, CEO of GRI, said they are “fully committed” to working with partners to improve alignment in the sustainability reporting landscape as the space continues to advance.
“This further collaboration between GRI and TNFD is significant because it comes at a time of increased demands from regulators, investors and other stakeholders for companies to demonstrate transparency for their impacts on nature and biodiversity as well as related risks and opportunities.
“The good news is that the thousands of organisations globally that already report their material nature-related impacts through the use of GRI’s standards are now well-positioned to start making disclosures aligned to the TNFD recommendations – and we are pleased to see that over 360 organisations have already committed to doing so. Our ongoing collaboration with TNFD will enable other GRI reporters to start their TNFD-aligned reporting.”
Tony Goldner, executive director of TNFD, added: “The first decision of the Taskforce when it was formed was to build on what already existed from both the science on nature and biodiversity, and the corporate reporting standards arena. GRI’s experience over several decades on impact assessment and reporting has been instrumental in informing the approach and recommendations now published by the TNFD. We are delighted by the high level of alignment achieved.
“As market participants across over 45 countries start to assess and report on their nature-related issues aligned with our recommendations, they have asked us for further guidance and examples on how to do so in a manner consistent with their existing GRI impact analysis and reporting. We look forward to continuing close collaboration with GRI to develop that practical implementation guidance for market participants.”
