Asking Better Questions on Nature: What do directors need to know?
Panellists provided actionable insights surrounding the guide, expanding upon the twelve questions designed to drive meaningful discussion between boards and executives, and exploring the decision-making benefits of the resource.
‘Nowhere to hide from nature risk’
- Tony Goldner set the scene by charting the shift in focus of non-executive directors, who no longer see nature as a “peripheral concern, but a core business issue.” GFI’s analysis on the materiality of nature-related financial risks in the UK estimates that unmitigated nature risks could threaten up to 12% of GDP in the next 10 years, solidifying the case that nature is material to business.
- In BloombergNEF’s Growing Role of Nature-Related Business report, 900 UK businesses acting to reduce business harm on nature were found to have generated an estimated £2.2 billion pounds of revenue in 2024, and revenues of nature-related organisations increased over 25% from their 2023 earnings.
- Amidst a rapidly evolving landscape, directors are encouraged to utilise a company’s dependence on nature and biodiversity as an opportunity, resisting what Tony Goldner calls “carbon tunnel vision,” and building resilience through acts that address and mitigate nature risk, reduce costs, and unlock new growth.
Approaches to decision-making: How can non-executive directors create long-term sustainable value?
- When buffeted by geopolitical and macroeconomic headwinds, continuous exploration and understanding of market pressures (regulatory shifts, changing reporting and industry standards, and investor expectations) is the current operating context for boards. Informed directors recognise that nature isn’t a political or ideological conversation for corporates, but a business issue.
- During the discussion, context was connected to accountability; the panellists reflected that non-executive directors need to be steadfast on the business rationale of considering nature risk. Dame Amelia Fawcett spoke to the benefits of “forcing critical conversation” with executive teams towards the business case of acting on nature for long-term sustainable value.
Useful business case conversations
The discussion reflected that useful business case conversations can be built around:
- Bringing nature to the table
- Asking targeted questions to receive targeted answers
- Creating outcome-based and income-based conversations, and
- Demanding the information required to hold executives and the wider company accountable.
Pursuing informed data was also championed by the panel, who found that collective engagement naturally contributes to the data quality — the desire for high-quality data should not become an obstacle but an inevitable goal.
Interrogating risk and capitalising on opportunity
“The green economy is probably the single biggest opportunity we face this century” –Dame Amelia Fawcett, Co-Chair, International Advisory Panel for Biodiversity Credits; Chair, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; NED, State Street.
It was highlighted that understanding nature risk and creating nature-positive opportunities is part of a director’s fiduciary duty. This includes looking for evidence that management has considered multiple risk types and used frameworks such as the TNFD LEAP approach to identify and assess nature-related issues. A robust map of dependencies and consideration of the dynamic interaction between dependencies and impacts creates business resilience.
Helle Bank Jørgensen stressed the importance of “foresight” in the board room. Non-executive directors can interrogate existing and future business processes to identify and evaluate commercial opportunities. Embedding materiality assessments into corporate systems strengthens corporate and site-level assessment feedback loops.
Key Takeaways
Trade-offs: Directors need to think long-term about what their organisation will look like and, most importantly, what it is doing for the broader ecosystem system services on which it is reliant. Trade-offs are a crucial component in managing expectation but need to be made with care and intention.
“No one specific question or metric is the answer,” said Vaishnavi Ravishankar, regarding investor assurance. But understanding the “cost of inaction,” Vicky Moffatt reflected, is integral to creating sustainable value.
Leveraging perspective: The board can leverage their breadth of perspective to capture new opportunities and cultivate action. One example of this is viewing building maintenance as a supply chain resilience issue and responding accordingly.
Responsibility: To quote David Alfrey: “past behaviours of nature are not a predictor of future behaviours of nature,” and board directors need to consider how to equip their organisations best to weather this uncertainty. Ensure due diligence has been carried out on the unintended consequences that can occur legally, morally, and financially from asset-related decisions.
Capacity building: To create the runway required to tackle difficult issues head on, directors need to evaluate their competences and those of their board and executive teams to enable informed and efficient decision making. TNFD’s Asking Better Questions guide offers a toolkit for understanding potential competency gaps, and where challenge, oversight, and inspiration can come from boards.
Time: Many businesses have to prioritise short-term needs to fulfil their obligations to customers, suppliers, employees, shareholders and a range of other stakeholders. However, when considering nature, it's important to think about the short-, medium- and long-term timeframes, as well as natural variability (e.g. seasonality), which may be outside your company's traditional planning horizons. This may require a mindset shift, which the board can play a powerful part in cultivating.
Ultimately, forward-thinking businesses are the ones that adopt the mindset that “the green economy and acting on nature is not a values issue, but a value issue” – Dame Amelia Fawcett.
Related Content
Asking Better Questions on Nature – For board directors
This “Asking Better Questions on Nature” guide is designed to help non-executives and boards across business and finance surface critical insights about nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks and opportunities to inform their decision making.
Watch: Asking better questions on nature: What do directors need to know?
Recording taken on 29 June during London Climate Action Week 2025. Following the launch of TNFD’s publication “Asking Better Questions on Nature” guide for board directors, the event was hosted by Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), Chapter Zero, Green Finance Institute (GFI), Competent Boards, Commonwealth Climate and Law Initiative (CCLI).
