The TNFD is a global initiative established to create a risk management and disclosure framework for nature-related issues, enabling organizations to identify, assess, manage, and report their impacts and dependencies on nature. Launched in 2021, it brings together experts from finance, business, and environmental science to align financial flows with nature-positive outcomes. Its 2023 Recommendations introduced a comprehensive framework — including 14 disclosure recommendations and the LEAP approach (Locate, Evaluate, Assess, Prepare) to guide organizations in assessing and reporting their nature-related risks and opportunities. In essence, the 2023 Recommendations define what organizations should measure and disclose, while the new 2025 Guidance on Nature in Transition Plans focuses on how to embed those insights into corporate strategy and decision-making.
The new guidance aims to help organizations:
Translate nature-related insights into transition strategies that align with global goals;
Integrate nature considerations into core business planning and financial decisions;
Ensure that nature and climate considerations are treated in parallel and reinforce one another.
By bridging the gap between analysis and implementation, the guidance enables businesses to move from risk awareness to actionable transformation, embedding biodiversity, ecosystem health, and resource stewardship into business models.
The TNFD outlines five interconnected themes for developing robust nature transition plans, ensuring alignment with GFANZ, TCFD, and ISSB frameworks:
Foundations: Establishes the overall direction and scope of the transition plan. This includes clarifying how nature-related issues affect the business model, setting key assumptions, defining financing needs, and prioritizing the most material dependencies, impacts, and risks on nature.
Implementation Strategy: Converts commitments into concrete actions across operations, products, and services. It outlines how resources will be allocated, policies aligned, and for financial institutions, how transition finance and capital allocation will be directed to support nature-positive outcomes.
Governance : Embeds nature into corporate oversight by defining clear roles for boards and management. It ensures accountability through incentives linked to nature performance and emphasizes building the internal skills and capacity needed to deliver on commitments.
Engagement Strategy: Promotes active collaboration with stakeholders across the value chain. It encourages transparency, shared responsibility, and inclusive approaches that enable fair and just transitions.
Metrics and Targets: Establishes clear indicators and measurable goals aligned with global frameworks such as the Science Based Targets for Nature (SBTN) and Nature Positive Initiative (NPI). It integrates both absolute and intensity-based measures, ensuring performance is tracked against ecological baselines and planetary thresholds.
The new TNFD guidance aligns closely with major international sustainability and reporting frameworks. This alignment ensures that companies using the guidance can stay consistent with global standards and meet upcoming disclosure and regulatory requirements. Key areas of alignment include:
Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD): Extends the TCFD’s four-pillar structure — Governance, Strategy, Risk Management, and Metrics & Targets — to cover nature-related risks and opportunities.
International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB): Supports the ISSB’s sustainability disclosure standards, helping organizations provide clear and comparable nature-related information to investors and stakeholders.
EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD): Helps companies prepare for the EU’s mandatory reporting rules by embedding biodiversity and ecosystem considerations into their corporate disclosures.
Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF): Aligns business actions with the global goal to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030, contributing to nature-positive outcomes worldwide.
By linking to these frameworks, the TNFD guidance helps organisations strengthen transparency, meet growing investor expectations, and integrate nature into their long-term business and financial strategies.
The publication of the Guidance on Nature in Transition Plans signals a new phase for how businesses approach sustainability, one where nature moves from the margins of reporting to the centre of corporate strategy. The TNFD encourages companies to identify their most material nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks, and opportunities. From there, organizations can design transition plans that integrate nature considerations into governance, operations, and finance. The taskforce also highlights that implementation is expected to evolve over time. Early adopters may begin with limited coverage or pilot projects, gradually expanding as data, tools, and internal capabilities improve. For investors and financial institutions, the guidance provides a common framework to assess how well companies are addressing nature-related issues and to channel capital towards activities that contribute to a nature-positive and climate-resilient economy.
As companies begin to integrate nature into their transition planning, expert guidance and practical implementation support become essential. Cognitud helps organizations translate frameworks like the TNFD into actionable strategies. By combining data-driven analysis, regulatory insight, and sustainability expertise, Cognitud supports businesses in identifying their nature-related risks and opportunities, setting measurable targets, and embedding biodiversity and ecosystem considerations into governance, operations, and reporting. Through its advisory services and strategic partnerships, Cognitud enables organisations to move confidently from compliance to leadership — creating transition plans that are not only climate-aligned but also nature-positive and future-ready.
Dr. Somnath Hazra
Build actionable plans grounded in your sector’s risks and growth priorities.
The Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) is a global initiative that develops frameworks for assessing, managing, and disclosing nature-related risks, impacts, dependencies, and opportunities. Established in 2021, TNFD supports businesses and financial institutions in shifting financial flows toward nature-positive outcomes.
TNFD works by providing a structured framework and tools to help organizations understand and report their interactions with nature. Its core methodology, the LEAP approach (Locate, Evaluate, Assess, Prepare), guides organizations through identifying nature-related dependencies and impacts, assessing risks and opportunities, and preparing strategies and disclosures.
TNFD is important because it helps organizations understand how biodiversity loss, ecosystem degradation, and nature-related risks affect their long-term financial performance. By standardizing nature-related disclosure, TNFD drives transparency, supports regulatory alignment, and enables investors to make better decisions. It also helps organisations contribute to the global goal of halting and reversing nature loss by 2030.
Nature-related disclosure refers to reporting on how an organization interacts with nature—its impacts on ecosystems, dependencies on natural resources, and exposure to nature-related risks and opportunities. These disclosures allow stakeholders to evaluate how well a company is managing ecological risks and contributing to nature-positive outcomes.
To comply with TNFD, organizations should: • Use the LEAP approach to identify and assess nature-related impacts, dependencies, and risks. • Apply the 14 TNFD disclosure recommendations, aligned with the TCFD structure. • Integrate nature considerations into governance, strategy, risk management, and metrics. • Develop nature-related targets and indicators aligned with global standards such as SBTN. • Use the 2025 TNFD Guidance to embed nature into transition plans and long-term business planning. • Compliance is expected to evolve over time, starting with material areas and expanding as data and capabilities grow.
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