Last updated: May 18, 2026.
The Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures, usually called TNFD, gives companies and financial institutions a framework for identifying, assessing, managing, and disclosing nature-related issues. It is often described as the nature equivalent of TCFD, but nature reporting has its own challenges: it is location-specific, value-chain heavy, and depends on understanding ecosystems, biodiversity, water, land, pollution, commodities, and affected communities.
TNFD released its final recommendations, version 1.0, in September 2023. The framework is structured around four disclosure pillars: governance, strategy, risk and impact management, and metrics and targets. It includes 14 recommended disclosures and a practical assessment approach called LEAP: Locate, Evaluate, Assess, and Prepare.
This guide explains what TNFD is, how the recommendations work, how LEAP can be used in practice, and how TNFD connects to ISSB, ESRS, GRI, TCFD-style reporting, and corporate sustainability strategy. Keslio can help companies turn nature-related reporting into a practical workplan through sustainability strategy, reporting and communications, and supplier request support.
Short answer: TNFD is a voluntary nature-related disclosure framework for companies and financial institutions. It helps organizations assess dependencies, impacts, risks, and opportunities related to nature, then disclose material information using four pillars and 14 recommended disclosures. Companies usually start with a location and value-chain screen, use the LEAP approach to identify priority nature issues, and then decide what to manage, measure, and disclose.
Why TNFD matters
Nature loss can affect business through resource availability, supply disruption, regulation, litigation, community conflict, reputational risk, insurance cost, investor scrutiny, and customer requirements. It can also create opportunities through better resource efficiency, resilient sourcing, nature-positive products, restoration, circularity, and stronger stakeholder trust.
For many companies, nature-related issues are already present but not yet organized. A food company may depend on pollination, soil health, water availability, and stable agricultural supply. A real estate company may affect land use, stormwater, heat, habitats, and local communities. A manufacturer may depend on water inputs, minerals, forest products, or suppliers operating near sensitive ecosystems. A service company may have fewer direct operational impacts but still face exposure through offices, data centers, suppliers, travel, and customer contracts.
TNFD matters because it gives companies a structured way to move from vague biodiversity concern to decision-useful disclosure and action.
TNFD and TCFD: similar structure, different subject
TNFD intentionally builds on the reporting architecture made familiar by TCFD. Both frameworks use four pillars and are designed to support better governance, strategy, risk management, and metrics. That makes TNFD easier for companies that already understand climate disclosure.
The difference is that nature is more place-based and multi-dimensional than greenhouse gas emissions. Climate reporting often starts with emissions data measured in carbon dioxide equivalent. Nature reporting often starts with locations, ecosystems, dependencies, impacts, and value-chain relationships.
This is why a company should not simply copy its climate disclosure and change the word climate to nature. TNFD requires a different evidence base: site locations, supplier locations, water use, land use, pollution, biodiversity-sensitive areas, ecosystem services, commodities, and engagement with affected stakeholders.
For climate disclosure context, see Keslio's practical guide to TCFD recommendations and ISSB climate disclosures.
The four TNFD disclosure pillars
1. Governance
The governance pillar asks how the organization oversees nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks, and opportunities. This includes board oversight, management roles, policies, controls, escalation routes, and how nature is considered in strategy and risk discussions.
Governance also matters because nature topics often sit across many functions: operations, procurement, real estate, legal, finance, risk, sustainability, product, and community relations.
2. Strategy
The strategy pillar asks how nature-related issues affect the organization's business model, value chain, strategy, and financial planning. This includes actual and potential effects across short, medium, and long-term horizons.
Examples include water scarcity affecting production, deforestation risk in commodity supply chains, permitting constraints for new sites, biodiversity-related regulation, supplier disruption, product redesign, or opportunities from lower-impact materials and restoration.
3. Risk and impact management
TNFD uses the phrase risk and impact management because nature reporting is not only about financial risk to the company. It also asks how the company identifies, assesses, prioritizes, and manages its impacts on nature and affected stakeholders.
This pillar is where companies explain their process: how locations were screened, how dependencies and impacts were identified, how supplier and value-chain issues were assessed, and how nature-related risks are integrated into enterprise risk management.
4. Metrics and targets
The metrics and targets pillar asks what the organization measures and what goals it uses to manage nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks, and opportunities. This may include water, land use, pollution, waste, ecosystem condition, restoration, high-risk commodities, protected-area proximity, supplier controls, or sector-specific indicators.
Nature metrics are often less mature than emissions metrics. A good first disclosure should be honest about data gaps and explain how the company plans to improve measurement over time.
The 14 recommended TNFD disclosures
The TNFD recommendations include 14 recommended disclosures under the four pillars. In plain English, they ask companies to explain:
- How the board oversees nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks, and opportunities.
- Management's role in assessing and managing nature-related issues.
- Human rights policies and engagement with Indigenous Peoples, local communities, affected stakeholders, and other relevant groups where applicable.
- Nature-related issues identified over the short, medium, and long term.
- The effect of those issues on business model, value chain, strategy, and financial planning.
- The resilience of strategy to nature-related risks and opportunities, where relevant.
- The locations of assets or activities that are material to nature-related issues.
- Processes for identifying and assessing nature-related issues.
- Processes for managing nature-related issues.
- How nature-related processes are integrated into overall risk and impact management.
- Metrics used to assess and manage material nature-related issues.
- Metrics used to assess and manage dependencies and impacts on nature.
- Targets and goals used to manage nature-related issues, and performance against them.
- How material nature-related issues affect financial position, performance, and cash flows where that information is material and available.
The exact wording and application should be checked against the TNFD recommendations and any reporting standard the company is using, but this summary shows the practical shape of the framework.
The LEAP approach
LEAP is TNFD's recommended assessment approach. It is not a disclosure checklist. It is an internal process that helps companies understand their nature-related issues before deciding what to disclose.
Locate
Identify where the company's direct operations, assets, suppliers, and value-chain activities interact with nature. This may include factories, offices, farms, mines, logistics routes, data centers, water-stressed sites, protected areas, biodiversity-sensitive locations, and high-impact supplier regions.
Evaluate
Evaluate dependencies and impacts. Dependencies are the ecosystem services the company relies on, such as water, soil quality, pollination, flood protection, climate regulation, or raw materials. Impacts are the ways the company affects nature, such as land conversion, pollution, water withdrawal, waste, habitat disturbance, invasive species, or greenhouse gas emissions that also affect ecosystems.
Assess
Assess risks and opportunities. Risks may be physical, transition, systemic, legal, reputational, operational, or financial. Opportunities may include improved resource efficiency, lower-impact products, resilient sourcing, restoration, circularity, access to finance, and stronger customer or investor trust.
Prepare
Prepare to respond and disclose. This includes deciding what to manage, what data to collect, what targets or actions are credible, what governance changes are needed, and what should be disclosed publicly or to customers, investors, lenders, or regulators.
How TNFD connects to ISSB
The ISSB has been working on nature-related disclosures and has said that IFRS S1 already requires material information about sustainability-related risks and opportunities, including nature-related risks and opportunities that could reasonably be expected to affect a company's prospects. In April 2026, the ISSB agreed to propose requirements for nature-related disclosures in the form of an IFRS Practice Statement, drawing on the TNFD framework, with an exposure draft expected in October 2026.
This means TNFD is increasingly relevant for companies watching ISSB developments. It does not mean every company has a mandatory TNFD report today. It means TNFD is becoming a key reference point for nature-related financial disclosure and investor-oriented sustainability reporting.
How TNFD connects to ESRS, GRI, and other standards
TNFD is not the only nature-related framework companies may encounter. ESRS includes biodiversity and ecosystems requirements where material, especially under ESRS E4. GRI includes impact-focused topic standards that can be relevant to biodiversity, water, waste, emissions, suppliers, and communities. CDP and other disclosure platforms have also been aligning parts of their nature-related reporting with TNFD concepts.
Companies affected by CSRD should not treat TNFD as a replacement for ESRS. Instead, TNFD can help structure assessment and disclosure thinking, especially around location, dependencies, impacts, risks, opportunities, metrics, targets, and value-chain context.
For related reporting context, see Keslio's guides to the European Sustainability Reporting Standards, materiality assessment, and the GRI Standards.
How to start a TNFD readiness project
1. Confirm the reporting purpose
Start by clarifying why the company is looking at TNFD. Is it for investor communication, lender due diligence, CSRD readiness, an internal risk review, a customer request, voluntary reporting, or a board strategy discussion?
The purpose determines the level of documentation needed. A first internal screen can be lighter than a public disclosure or investor-facing report.
2. Map operations, assets, suppliers, and locations
Nature-related issues are location-specific, so location data matters. Build a first map of owned and leased sites, major operating locations, critical suppliers, high-risk commodities, logistics routes, and value-chain activities.
Even a simple spreadsheet with site name, geography, activity type, water use, land use, nearby sensitive areas, key suppliers, and data owner can be enough to start.
3. Screen for priority nature issues
Use sector knowledge, internal records, stakeholder input, and available tools to screen for dependencies and impacts. Companies often look at water stress, land use, pollution, biodiversity-sensitive areas, waste, high-risk commodities, protected-area proximity, and supply-chain exposure.
The goal is not to produce a perfect biodiversity model immediately. The goal is to identify where deeper assessment is most needed.
4. Connect nature to business risk and strategy
Translate nature issues into business language. For example, water dependency may become production risk, permit risk, supplier risk, or capital expenditure. Deforestation exposure may become customer risk, regulatory risk, reputational risk, or product sourcing risk.
This step helps avoid a common problem: nature topics remain technically interesting but disconnected from commercial decisions.
5. Decide what to measure and improve
Choose a small number of useful metrics before trying to collect everything. The right metrics depend on sector and location, but may include water withdrawal, water discharge, waste, land area disturbed or restored, high-risk commodity volumes, supplier traceability, protected-area proximity, pollutant releases, or restoration progress.
Where data is weak, document the limitation and create an improvement plan. First-year TNFD work is often about building the baseline and evidence discipline.
6. Prepare the disclosure or internal briefing
A first TNFD-aligned output might be a public report section, a board briefing, an investor response, a customer questionnaire answer, or an internal nature-risk register. The output should be clear about scope, locations assessed, methodology, limitations, and next steps.
Common mistakes
- Treating nature like climate: nature issues cannot usually be reduced to one universal metric like carbon dioxide equivalent.
- Skipping locations: nature-related dependencies and impacts are place-based, so location data is essential.
- Ignoring suppliers: many nature impacts sit in raw materials, agriculture, packaging, logistics, extraction, land use, and subcontracted operations.
- Starting with disclosure before assessment: LEAP is useful because it helps companies understand the issues before writing the report.
- Overclaiming nature-positive outcomes: broad nature-positive claims need careful boundaries, evidence, and methodology.
- Using biodiversity language without business relevance: disclosure should connect nature issues to strategy, risk, operations, stakeholders, and financial relevance where applicable.
- Not engaging affected stakeholders: local context matters, especially where operations or supply chains affect communities, Indigenous Peoples, land, water, or livelihoods.
What companies should prepare
Before starting a TNFD readiness review, gather:
- Site, facility, asset, and office locations.
- Supplier and value-chain location data where available.
- Procurement categories, high-risk commodities, and key supplier lists.
- Water withdrawal, discharge, waste, land-use, pollution, and emissions data where relevant.
- Environmental permits, incidents, complaints, remediation actions, and audit records.
- Maps of protected areas, water-stressed areas, and biodiversity-sensitive locations where available.
- Existing biodiversity, water, land, waste, supplier, and human rights policies.
- Stakeholder engagement records, especially for affected communities and local stakeholders.
- Customer, investor, lender, or regulatory requests related to nature, biodiversity, water, land use, or supply chains.
For broader nature and biodiversity context, see Keslio's article on how businesses can help support nature and biodiversity.
How Keslio can help
Keslio helps companies turn nature-related disclosure frameworks into practical strategy, reporting, and supplier workplans. For TNFD-related work, this can include:
- Reviewing TNFD, ESRS, GRI, ISSB, customer, or investor nature-related requirements.
- Running a first TNFD readiness or LEAP-style screening exercise.
- Mapping sites, suppliers, commodities, and value-chain exposure.
- Identifying priority dependencies, impacts, risks, and opportunities.
- Creating data request checklists for internal teams and suppliers.
- Preparing board briefings, report sections, customer responses, and evidence packs.
- Connecting nature-related findings to sustainability strategy, procurement, reporting, and communications.
If you need to understand whether TNFD is relevant to your company, Keslio's sustainability strategy and reporting and communications services can help turn the framework into a focused first workplan.
