INTHEBLACK May 2026 - Magazine - Page 46
F E AT U R E
“Companies that take nature seriously tend to make better
long-term decisions. They are more thoughtful about where
and how they operate, how resilient their supply chains
are, and how exposed they may be to future regulation
or market shifts.”
ALEXANDRA BANKS, EY GLOBAL
“Without better integration of
nature-related risks and opportunities into
financial decision-making systems, businesses
in nature-dependent sectors may not be
actively identifying, mitigating and managing
material financial risks to the long-term value
of their business,” says Kristy Graham, CFO
of ASFI. “For financial leaders, biodiversity loss
is fundamentally a risk-management issue.”
SEEDS OF CHANGE
In December 2022, almost 200 countries
adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global
Biodiversity Framework at COP15,
committing to halt and reverse biodiversity
loss by 2030.
Meanwhile, the Taskforce on Naturerelated Financial Disclosures (TNFD)
has developed a risk management and
disclosure framework to help organisations
Representatives applaud
the adoption of the
Kunming-Montreal Global
Biodiversity Framework at
COP15 in Montreal, Canada,
December 2022.
46 INTHEBLACK May 2026
assess, report and act on nature-related risks
and opportunities.
Ahead of COP30 in 2025, the TNFD
announced that 733 organisations across
56 jurisdictions had committed to making
TNFD-aligned public disclosures.
While nature reporting may feel like
an additional burden after climate reporting,
Patrick Viljoen FCPA, CPA Australia’s
environment, social and governance lead,
says the two cannot be separated.
“You cannot view climate change and
biodiversity in isolation from each other.”
Viljoen uses the Great Barrier Reef in
Australia as an example of biodiversity loss
(and in this case coral bleaching) being
intertwined with climate change. “One is
very dependent on the other,” he says.
“We need to think more broadly and in
a more holistic fashion about how nature
