Thematic Report on Biodiversity Disclosure 2024

In line with the growing recognition of the importance of biodiversity for business, the demand for disclosure of biodiversity business performance is also growing. A number of biodiversity disclosure frameworks and standards, both regulatory and voluntary, have been published or are being developed.

This development is welcome, as information about an organization's biodiversity performance triggers action to continuously improve performance. However, despite significant alignment efforts between some of these outreach initiatives, it is not always apparent to most companies how they relate to each other, to what extent they overlap, and where substantial differences can be observed.

The creators of information reporting frameworks and standards attempt to address this concern by providing so-called interoperability maps or mapping tables, which provide high-level benchmarking that covers the full range of disclosure requirements.

This thematic report focuses specifically on biodiversity within the respective outreach initiatives and highlights the main differences and similarities. The report covers 6 biodiversity outreach initiatives, three of which are regulatory and three are voluntary:

Regulatory:

▪ European Sustainability Reporting Standard (ESRS) E4 on Biodiversity and Ecosystems, part of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD)
▪ Sustainable Financial Disclosure Regulation (SFDR).

▪ French energy and climate law, in particular article 29.

Voluntary
▪ Disclosure recommendations and additional guidance from the Nature-Related Financial Disclosure Task Force (TNFD)
▪ Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Biodiversity Standard
▪ CDP (the former Carbon Disclosure Project) biodiversity disclosure requirements.