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Ensuring nature is no longer an invisible externality
Actively supporting businesses and financial institutions to better understand their nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks and opportunities
The Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) is a global initiative launched on 4 June 2021 to support a shift in global financial flows away from nature-negative outcomes and toward nature-positive ones. It aims to ensure that nature is no longer treated as an invisible externality in business and finance.
The TNFD actively supports businesses in understanding their nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks, and opportunities. It provides a structured framework to help organizations integrate nature into decision-making and disclosure practices.
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is one of the four founding partners of the TNFD, alongside the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI), World Wildlife Fund (WWF), and Global Canopy.
TNFD Framework and Progress
The TNFD released its final recommendations in September 2023, and by 2025, over 500 organizations have committed to adopting the framework. The TNFD’s structure mirrors the TCFD, built around four pillars:
- Governance
- Strategy
- Risk and Impact Management
- Metrics and Targets
It also introduces the LEAP approach (Locate, Evaluate, Assess, Prepare) to guide organizations through nature-related risk and opportunity assessments.
UNDP’s commitment to scale up market adoption
With the support of the International Climate Initiative (IKI) of the Government of Germany, in 2022 UNDP launched the global project “Enabling and Scaling up Market Adoption of Nature-related Financial Disclosures”, to enable companies and financial institutions worldwide to get started on their nature-related issues and encouraging nature-related assessments and disclosures, across various sectors and geographies.
By the end of the project, enterprises in developing countries and financial institutions are expected to be able to understand their impacts and dependencies on nature, and better manage their business risks and opportunities. This is reached through the support of a number of implementing partners, including Global Canopy Programme (GCP), Green Finance Institute (GFI), UNEP Finance Initiative (UNEP FI), UNDP Biodiversity Finance Initiative (BIOFIN), and World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) International.
In order to encourage and scale market adoption of the TNFD recommendation by scaling-up market awareness, fifteen countries will implement activities under the project for engaging a broad range of relevant stakeholders and supporting market capacity building efforts.
Policy Alignment and Global Impact
The TNFD plays a vital role in advancing Target 15 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which calls for legal, administrative, and policy measures to ensure that large and transnational companies and financial institutions regularly monitor, assess, and transparently disclose their impacts on biodiversity.
In 2025, the TNFD signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the IFRS Foundation, aiming to align its framework with the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB). This collaboration enhances global consistency in sustainability reporting and supports the integration of nature into mainstream financial disclosures.
Why It Matters
Nature-related risks often remain invisible because the costs of ecosystem degradation are externalized—borne by society rather than reflected in corporate balance sheets. The TNFD framework helps correct this imbalance by embedding nature into financial decision-making. The TNFD framework can help to:
- Help improve the risk management and resilience of organisations in the face of growing impacts and dependencies on nature;
- Help identify and enable new solutions and business models that have a positive impact on the planet;
- Contribute to the global goal of halting and reversing nature loss by 2030 and living in harmony with nature by 2050 as set out in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF)
- Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
TNFD Early Adopters
Read more about the 500+ TNFD Adopters who have committed to start adopting the TNFD Recommendations.
