Corporate insights

Early corporate and finance nature assessments focused on broad sector-level risks and dependencies. Today, the conversation has moved to understanding the materiality of real location-specific risks.

Corporate leaders must move beyond averages and assumptions, towards location-based assessments of the ecosystems on which operations, supply chains and portfolios depend. This shift won't be possible without credible ecosystem data.

Current nature reporting frameworks

Nature-related reporting has accelerated in recent years. The Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) has hundreds of organisations reporting against its recommendations, working through the LEAP process - Locate, Evaluate, Assess, Prepare - which starts by identifying exactly where a company interfaces with nature.

The Nature Positive Initiative (NPI) State of Nature Metrics will be officially added to TNFD and Science Based Targets Network (SBTN) corporate disclosures and target setting guidelines from mid-October 2026. The NPI State of Nature Indicators and Metrics Framework was developed through extensive consultation to give businesses and financial institutions a consistent way to report on the state of the ecosystems they depend on and impact. Two of the four primary indicators relate to the state of ecosystems: Ecosystem Extent and Ecosystem Condition.

The demand for consistent, globally comparable measures of ecosystem extent and condition has never been clearer.

Speaking at the Global Nature Positive Summit, Tony Goldner, CEO of TNFD, noted how the adoption of TNFD and SBTN has driven demand for location-specific-data. Understanding nature-related risk starts with understanding exactly where a company interfaces with nature. Goldner pointed to a recurring set of concerns from the market: gaps in coverage, questions over data quality, an over-reliance on modelled rather than observed data, and uncertainty over whether the resulting analysis can be independently assured for disclosure.

During the same summit, Yuya Toyoshima of Oji Holdings Corporation illustrated what these gaps look like in practice. Oji Holdings manages 640,000 hectares of forest across seven countries, but after working through early TNFD assessments and piloting NPI's State of Nature Metrics found that accessing consistent ecosystem information across its global operations was one of the hardest parts of the process. The challenge of accessing reliable data grows sharply once an assessment has to account for the landscape surrounding a site, not just the site itself.

Why businesses need ecosystem data

Business interest in ecosystem data spans a range of use cases. The struggles described by Oji Holdings are just a subset of a longer list that includes site-based compliance assessments for mining or infrastructure projects, supply chain verification of non-conversion commitments, natural capital accounting, nature restoration and conservation planning and insurance risk modelling.

The common challenge behind all these use cases is the need for a globally standardised information on ecosystems. Despite this significance, ecosystem data remains fragmented and inconsistent. National ecosystem maps use different classification systems, coverage varies enormously by country, and for organisations operating across multiple geographies, comparing like with like between locations is often impossible without significant additional field work.

Finding consistent and comparable ecosystem data

The Global Ecosystems Atlas is an evolving data service being built as a globally consistent, transparent and standardised view of the world's ecosystems, drawing on country data, earth observation and AI, aligned to the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology. Rather than a single fixed release, it is being developed in stages - starting with a global synthesis map of ecosystem distribution, and progressively adding monitoring of ecosystem change and, later, condition - so that it can grow alongside the needs of the organisations using it.

Are you reporting to global standards, setting targets, or developing site-level risk assessments?

The Global Ecosystems Atlas is engaging with potential users, to make sure its products can meet the needs of businesses.

If your organisation is dealing with any of the challenges above - whether TNFD or CSRD reporting, SBTN target-setting, natural capital accounting or site-level risk assessment – sign up to our mailing list and let us know if you’d like to be an early tester.

You can also reach out to Samantha Lacey, Business Engagement Lead, directly: slacey.ext[at]geosec.org