Proposals to improve the nature-risk data value chain has been welcomed by sustainability data leaders who said they will pave the way for better decision making and reporting by financial institutions and provide more detailed analyses for investors.
The proposals offer a slate of principles to improve the quality of state-of-nature data collection and integration as well as establish a baseline for metadata standards on biodiversity information. They also recommend commitments to creating a repository of nature-linked data – called the Nature Data Public Facility (NDPF) – that can be accessed by all stakeholders.
Nature-related risks have climbed up the sustainability agenda for capital markets even amid pushback against the broader ESG project as companies and investors seek to tackle the threats that a changing world exerts on their assets and investments. A rise in severe weather events, such as hurricanes and storms, that have caused trillions of dollars-worth of wind, flood and exposure damage has stimulated demand for data to identify and mitigate the impact of those incidents.
“The announcement is a major milestone in bringing nature risk into mainstream corporate and financial decision-making,” said Alexandra Mihailescu Cichon, chief commercial officer at ESG risk research and data provider RepRisk.
“By standardising metadata, harmonising licensing and proposing a global Nature Data Public Facility, TNFD tackles long-standing fragmentation in biodiversity and nature data – improving consistency, accessibility, and interoperability for all users,” Cichon told Data Management Insight.
Important Step
The proposals are expected to be adopted by the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), which has emerged as the leading global ESG reporting rules body.
Martina Macpherson, Sustainable Finance Chapter Lead at Value Balancing Alliance echoed the sentiment of other data leaders.
“The release of the new TNFD reporting guidelines is an important step toward integrating nature into mainstream corporate and investor decision-making,” Macpherson told Data Management Insight.
“As the ISSB begins to consider how to embed nature-related disclosures within its global baseline, interoperability becomes absolutely critical. Companies and financial institutions cannot operate under a patchwork of parallel frameworks; they need clarity, comparability, and alignment between TNFD, ISSB and other jurisdictional requirements.”
COP30 Announcement
The TNFD’s proposals were announced from Sao Paolo during the United Nations’ COP30 environment summit in Brazil. The organisation said its suggestions seek to “catalyse a whole-of-value-chain mindset shift about the discoverability, quality and accessibility of nature-related data as a strategic global public good”.
The proposals also comprise:
- The harmonisation of licensing and usage agreements to access state-of-nature data
- Provide incentives for firms to disclose accurate state-of-nature data through the NDPF
- The formation of a Nature Data Trust to fund, collect and aggregate data
- Creation of a nature-data measure protocol to guide market participants
- A universal data collection and sharing protocol to enhance state-of-nature data collection and sharing
The TNFD’s announcement is are a key part of a process to build a wider sustainability data reporting protocol for all industries. They follow the organisation’s publication of a voluntary reporting framework for companies, which it said in Brazil was now followed by more than 700 businesses with a market valuation of more than US$9 trillion.
Also in Brazil, ISSB said the TNFD’s guidance would be incorporated into its IFRS S1 sustainability reporting standard.
“The convergence between TNFD and ISSB is an opportunity: not just to harmonise reporting, but to elevate nature into the core of financial analysis – where it belongs,” said Macpherson.
Data Spend
Investors have increased investment in nature-related data as the threats that nature and habitat loss are exerting on the global economy have become more evident. The Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS), which comprises central banks and regulators, has stated that nature-related risks pose significant macroeconomic implications and are a source of risk for financial stability.
According to the WWF, half of the world’s GDP is at risk from deforestation, water stress and other consequences of climate change and human interactions with the natural world. They are also aware of growing public opprobrium – and the resultant reputational and financial damage – surrounding corporate mismanagement of ecosystems.
The data challenge to institutions is exacerbated by business’ failure of inability to disclose accurate nature-related data that can help inform investment decisions.
The 2025 Nature Action Barometer by professional services giant EY found that while more than nine in 10 firms mentioned nature in their latest published reports, few offered it in the sort of detail necessary to aid decision makers. Only a quarter aligned with TNFD guidance and only 13 per cent published separate reports on their progress towards meeting the organisation’s recommendations.
The TNFD also noted in an August report that despite nature-related risks not being widely assessed or disclosed as financially material by companies, that data is vital to investors.
In response, data providers and institutions alike have created tools to help investors gather and interpret data to help them assess the risks facing their assets and the impacts those same investments have on nature. Among them, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) has integrated of biodiversity data from start-up NatureAlpha into its data offering and asset manager Robeco has created a sectoral biodiversity analysis tool to help investors identify an issuer’s risks to nature.
David Craig, co-chair of the TNFD, said that as “demand for high-quality nature data continues to grow exponentially, trust and confidence in state-of-nature data remains a significant issue.
“At the same time, upstream data collectors and aggregators on the front line need more funding to support their critical work,” Craig said in a statement. “State-of-nature data is a strategic public good of global importance, but it urgently needs a set of global commons mechanisms to drive an upgrade in the quality and timeliness of the nature data that everyone is looking for.”
RepRisk’s Cichon said the proposals represented a step towards solving a longstanding challenge in the nature-risk data space.
“This effort reflects the broader, ongoing challenge of achieving consistency, accessibility, comparability and interoperability across all types of data, and TNFD aims to address exactly that for nature-related information.”
She said that the proposals would help ensure that market participants received clearer and more usable data to drive better decisions on nature-related risks and opportunities, and that this would “drive real on-the-ground impact”.
Data Benefits
While the proposals, especially the creation of an NDPF, would add pressure on data vendors in the form of greater expectations of “transparency, methodological clarity, and interoperability”, the move would ultimately be beneficial to the broader data industry.
“The public facility will offer raw ecological data only, private vendors will increasingly differentiate through analytics, modelling, and independent incident intelligence,” Cichon said. “TNFD’s focus on triangulation and supply-chain traceability will heighten demand for datasets that expose real-world impacts and biodiversity risks. Providers with robust, rules-based methodologies are already well positioned.”
Macpherson praised the latest TNFD guidelines for drawing a link between financial performance and nature loss and ecosystem disruptions, arguing that disclosures must evolve to include nature-related scenarios, including the capture of energy-transition risks.
“These shifts carry significant implications for methods and data,” she said. “Traditional ESG metrics are not sufficient; companies will need robust impact valuation methods, location-specific data, geospatial analytics, and sector-specific models to quantify externalities, dependencies, and resilience.
“Investors, in turn, will require consistent monetary metrics and scenario-aligned indicators that feed into valuation, risk modelling, and capital-allocation processes.”
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