Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures

And once it's mandated, then all companies have to do it.

And so I wonder who will become the first country to mandate the TNFD on nature.

France is, I would say, ahead of the pack.

They already have mandatory reporting on biodiversity as part of their loi pact for major finance institutions, so it would be a small hop for them to mandate the NFD.

Because that's not... what's happening everywhere else around the world.

I think in Europe, we all get very excited about what happens in the United States, but my experience of working in Asia and the APAC region is that they've got their own mindset on this, and they're forging ahead and not slowing down on sustainability and sustainable finance.

A good data point for that is that TNFD has been astonishingly successful over the last few years.

We've had a 46% increase from 24 to 25 in adopters.

In today's episode, we're going to be talking all about nature, about why it's so important for finance, and what we can do to understand it and protect it.

And to help me get into all of this, I'm joined by a fantastic guest, Tony Goldner, who is the CEO of the Taskforce for Nature-related Financial Disclosures, or TNFD.

Tony, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks so much.

And so, yeah, it's, it's been a, it's been a recurring feature of my career.

And then when this opportunity came up, I thought this felt like a really interesting challenge, and one that would leverage all of the different parts of my background.

So that's how I ended up at TNFD.

Am I right in saying that you've been there sort of since the start of TNFD?

Uh, this is the framework that I sit with quite a bit.

It's called a TNFD, or the Taskforce for Nature-related Financial Disclosures.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Mm

...

so the TNFD, this task force.

Uh, so this is a bit newer But essentially arose from the need to expand our horizons a little bit.

There are three things under that banner that I would ask for.

One would be, you know, if you could take something like the TNFD, the Task Force for Nature-Related Financial Disclosures, which is currently a voluntary reporting regime under which companies are choosing to report on their nature-related exposures, dependencies, risks and opportunities.

If that was to become something that was a mandatory requirement, that you have to report your nature risk and exposure, that also things like your adaptation plans, that would force companies not just to report on, hey, we've got all these risks, but actually we've got all these risks and here's what we're doing about it.

so the enabling conditions to drive towards a trigger for action for companies.

So you probably have 20% crossover.

And I really don't understand why some renewable energy folks I talk to are super fluent about SBTI scope 3 and do not know what TNFD is.

And it's

Okay, I

Let's diversify our nature portfolios too.

don't be all in on just carbon in just one region, right? And I think this actually, we haven't really talked much about nature disclosures, but I think that, you know, look at your TNFD report.

What are your risks? There are investment opportunities there.

for each and every one of those nature risks and start thinking about how you kind of build a portfolio where you are investing across water and soil health and carbon storage and multiple regions because that is how we build resilience, right? Through diversification.

And so some of this, some of the action that we see in businesses is being driven by shareholders, by philanthropic donors.

If you're in the not for profit space, they will be asking some by regulation to TCFD, TNFD.

is driving some of the action as well.

I do think, and I do think that we have not done what we could do on this as sustainability professionals.

Waitrose and Novo Nordisk validated new science-based targets this week, with Waitrose among the first to set them for seafood.

More than 733 organisations have now committed to the TNFD framework.

The World Economic Forum puts around $44 trillion of economic value, more than half of global GDP, as moderately or highly dependent on nature.

This is not an environmental statistic.