Getting TNFD on the Board agenda

Chapter Zero in collaboration with The Green Finance Institute, which leads the TNFD UK consultation group, have created this briefing presentation for Non-Executive Directors and Heads of Sustainability to facilitate discussions around adoption of TNFD reporting within their organisations. It demonstrates why the Task Force on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) is relevant to all Boards, and how businesses can get started. It is for readers who have heard about TNFD but want to learn more about how it is relevant to their priorities. The deck is structured around three sections:

1. Why are Boards acting on nature and TNFD?
2. How are businesses getting organised?
3. How can the TNFD framework help?

As a Non-Executive Director, you can navigate through the presentation deck in the following ways to support your own capacity building and/or facilitate your Board discussions regarding your Nature strategies and reporting capabilities:

• Use Section 1 to understand how nature and TNFD are relevant to your priorities as a Board member.
• Use Section 2 to understand how your business can equip itself to manage its nature risks and opportunities, access learning materials, and compare your current board structure with the example governance framework to understand the entry points for nature across your duties as a Board member.
• Use Section 3 to understand how the TNFD recommendations and guidance can help your business on this journey and what adopting the TNFD framework means.
• From the list of suggested questions for NEDs to ask management (in Section 2), select those most relevant to your business and extract supporting slides from the presentation where useful.

More about the Green Finance Institute (GFI)

The Green Finance Institute (GFI) was established with support from the UK Government and the City of London in 2019 to partner on unlocking private sector finance to meet net zero and nature targets. The organisation works across multiple sectors, convening key stakeholders to identify barriers and develop solutions. Most recently, GFI CEO, Dr Rhian Mari Thomas OBE, acted as chair of the independent taskforce established to advise on the National Wealth Fund.

Specific to nature investment and environmental business resilience, the GFI hosts the Secretariat for the TNFD and the UK National Consultation Group of over 600 companies, funded by Defra. The broader nature team (GFI Hive) advised and assessed on all three rounds of Defra’s Natural Environment Investment Readiness Funds (NEIRF) working with financial institutions, farmers, UK NGOs and companies to support the UK to develop the supply, demand and enabling policy environment to unlock private sector investment in nature.

The GFI also leads work on GBF Target 19 with UNEP FI and UNDP Biofin, supporting signatories on developing models and markets that unlock private sector finance for nature restoration and conservation.