Nature Positive Corporate Assessment Guide for Financial Institutions 2025

As availability and quality of corporate data on nature have not yet reached target-state levels, governance is one of the key components financial institutions can rely on to assess companies on nature.In particular, financial institutions hope to see robust governance for nature-related issues, which would ensure that the necessary oversight roles and responsibilities are in place to execute the strategy and actions laid out. A company’s nature governance heavily depends on their business model. Organizations with nature or natural resources at the centre of their business models often already have nature deeply integrated into governance structures (e.g. companies offering recycling services or in forestry/agriculture might have dedicated functions responsible for pollution/waste strategy at the board level). Other companies might integrate nature governance into existing structures or require the formation of new governance structures (e.g. nature governance steering committees) to ensure the necessary governance systems are in place to drive such change over a long period of time. Financial institutions seek the following information from companies when assessing this indicator: –Board-level oversight: –Nature formally included in the mandate of board-level committee –Nature ambition and nature transition plan approved at board level –Ongoing oversight of progress on nature at board level –Executive/senior management oversight: –Nature formally included in the mandate of executive-level committee(s) –Nature ambition and nature transition plan approved at executive committee level –Executive-committee-level ownership of nature transition plan development and implementation –Skills and training: –Board-level training on nature –Senior-management-level training on nature –Employee training on nature Existing frameworks that companies may be using: –TNFD disclosure recommendations (governance A and governance B) and the TNFD Discussion paper on nature transition plans provide an overview of expectations around a company’s nature governance.82 –WWF’s Catalysing Change: The Urgent Need for Nature Transition Plans provides an overview of expectations around a company’s nature governance (including board-level or other strategy-oversight-body-level governance).83 –Nature benchmarking initiatives state expectations around a company’s nature governance (such as Nature Action 100).84 How financial institutions are getting started: Many companies have implemented and disclosed governance structures for climate and sustainability, particularly since the introduction of the Task Force for Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). Some are starting to explicitly incorporate nature, as a report by CDP in collaboration with Oliver Wyman and the World Economic Forum indicates. In total, 52% of companies (based on a sample of 6,800 businesses, accounting for two-thirds of global market capitalization) have implemented board-level oversight of water, 44% have board oversight of biodiversity and 33% have it for forests.85 Financial institutions can draw on this information and engage with companies to understand the extent to which climate and sustainability governance structures are taking a holistic approach when addressing other drivers of nature change. The TNFD Disclosures Recommendations build on the TCFD structure and include a pillar on governance, and more than 500 companies are already signed up as TNFD adopters.86 Nature Positive: Corporate Assessment Guide for Financial Institutions 35