A Proliferation Without Precedent

Something remarkable has happened to the biodiversity and nature space over the past five years. What was once a niche concern of conservation scientists and a handful of impact investors has exploded into a regulatory and strategic imperative for businesses across every sector. And with that explosion has come an avalanche of frameworks, standards, tools, and methodologies – each promising to help organisations understand and act on their relationship with nature.

The TNFD’s own tools catalogue listed over 200 datasets, methods, frameworks and tools to support nature-related assessment and disclosure, according to a snapshot of the catalogue at the time of writing. The EU Business and Biodiversity Platform’s most recent review covers 37 distinct approaches just for businesses and financial institutions. For anyone trying to navigate this landscape, it is genuinely bewildering.

In conversations with corporate sustainability teams, CFOs, ESG analysts, and development finance institutions, we hear the same questions repeatedly: Is TNFD LEAP the same as SBTN? Does CSRD require us to do a nature assessment or not? If we do the IFC approach for our lender, does that satisfy our ESRS E4 obligations? Can we just use ENCORE and be done with it?

The short answer is: it depends. The longer answer is what this article is about.

One important point before we begin: most organisations will ultimately use multiple frameworks, not choose just one. The question is which to prioritise, in what sequence, and for what purpose. This article helps you work that out.

Six Families of Frameworks – and How They Relate

The most useful way to cut through the noise is to recognise that these frameworks are not all trying to do the same thing. They belong to distinct families, each designed for a different question and a different user. Drawing on the WWF BIAF Landscape Study (2025), we can organise the biodiversity assessment landscape into six broad categories:

The critical insight is that these categories are complementary, not competing. ENCORE helps you understand where your value chain touches nature. TNFD LEAP gives you a structured process to assess and disclose that. SBTN tells you what targets to set as a result. IFC PS6 governs how project risk is managed; and additional metrics and evidence are needed to go beyond risk management to verifying net positive outcomes. They feed into one another – and understanding which question you are trying to answer is the key to choosing the right tool.

The Core Frameworks — Side by Side

A quick-reference comparison of the frameworks most practitioners will encounter. Use this as a working reference alongside the deep dives below. Effort ratings reflect the typical resource investment for a mid-sized organisation engaging each framework for the first time.

Effort ratings reflect typical resource investment for a first-time engagement by a mid-sized organisation. ● = 1 unit of effort (max 5).

The Core Frameworks You Need to Understand

1. TNFD LEAP – The Assessment Process

The Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) released its final recommendations in September 2023 after a two-year development process involving over 1,000 organisations. At its heart is the LEAP approach: Locate, Evaluate, Assess, Prepare. TNFD LEAP is not a disclosure standard itself – it is a structured assessment methodology that helps organisations work out what to disclose. Think of it as the how behind the what.

Locate means identifying where in your value chain your business intersects with sensitive ecosystems and biodiversity. Evaluate means assessing your dependencies on nature’s services and your impacts on it. Assess means translating those dependencies and impacts into financial risks and opportunities. Prepare means developing strategy and reporting.

ESRS E4 permits – but does not mandate – the use of TNFD LEAP as the methodology for materiality assessment across environmental topics. In practice, because TNFD and ESRS are highly aligned (all 14 TNFD recommended disclosures are reflected in ESRS), organisations that conduct a TNFD LEAP assessment will find that most of their ESRS E4 disclosure requirements are simultaneously addressed. TNFD LEAP is not the only permitted route, but it is the most comprehensive and widely recognised one. If you are going to do one structured assessment process, it is the most logical backbone.

1b. GRI 101: Biodiversity (2024) – The Stakeholder Reporting Standard

Updated in 2024, GRI 101 is a major global stakeholder-facing biodiversity reporting standard, effective for GRI biodiversity reporting from 1 January 2026. Where TNFD LEAP is primarily designed to produce investor-grade, financially material disclosure, GRI 101 is oriented towards a wider set of stakeholders including communities, NGOs, employees, and public interest users of sustainability information. For companies outside the CSRD scope – or those wanting to establish a public biodiversity disclosure practice before committing to a full TNFD programme – GRI 101 is the most practical entry point. Conveniently, GRI 101 and TNFD are broadly compatible: completing GRI 101 reporting provides a strong foundation for TNFD alignment later.

A further disclosure consideration for investor-facing companies is IFRS S1 (ISSB) – the International Sustainability Standards Board’s foundational standard for sustainability-related financial disclosures. On nature specifically, the ISSB moved its Nature-related Disclosures project from research to active standard-setting in November 2025. In April 2026, the ISSB agreed that the output will take the form of an IFRS Practice Statement – drawing directly on the TNFD framework and its LEAP approach – which will guide companies on how to provide material nature-related disclosures under IFRS S1. An exposure draft is targeted for publication at the Convention on Biological Diversity COP17 in October 2026, subject to public consultation. Crucially, the ISSB has confirmed that material nature-related disclosures are already required under IFRS S1 today – the Practice Statement will clarify how to provide them. For companies in jurisdictions adopting IFRS S1 (including the UK, Australia, and others), this means investor-facing nature risk disclosure cannot wait for the new standard to be finalised.

2. SBTN – Science Based Targets for Nature

The Science Based Targets Network (SBTN) released its corporate guidance in July 2024, following a pilot programme with companies including AB InBev, LVMH, Nestlé, Tesco, and H&M Group. The five-step process – Assess, Prioritise, Set, Act, Track – provides a rigorous methodology for setting nature targets that are genuinely aligned with what the science says is needed, not merely what is convenient.

SBTN currently covers land and freshwater targets, with ocean and biodiversity integration progressing. Validation services opened in February 2025 through the Accountability Accelerator. The key distinction: SBTN tells you how ambitious your targets need to be. It is the nature equivalent of the 1.5°C alignment standard in climate. A company can do a TNFD LEAP assessment and decide its own targets – but to legitimately claim those targets are “science-based nature targets,” SBTN validation through the Accountability Accelerator is the recognised route for making that claim credibly.

3. CSRD / ESRS E4 – The Regulatory Floor (for EU-scope companies)

For companies within scope of the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive – and this includes non-EU companies with significant EU revenues or operations above the thresholds – ESRS E4 on Biodiversity and Ecosystems is mandatory where the topic is deemed material. The timeline and scope have been significantly revised by the EU Omnibus I Directive (formally published as Directive 2026/470 in February 2026). Wave 1 companies – originally large public interest entities with over 500 employees – began reporting on FY2024 data, with reports due in 2025. Post-Omnibus, the revised mandatory scope threshold is companies with more than 1,000 employees and more than €450m net annual turnover; Wave 1 companies below the new thresholds may qualify for a transition exemption for FY2025 and FY2026, subject to Member State implementation. Wave 2 companies – originally scheduled to report in 2026 on FY2025 data – have been postponed by two years and will now report in 2028 on FY2027 data. If you are a Wave 2 company, this reprieve is real, but it should not be read as permission to disengage: the underlying assessment work still takes 12 to 18 months, and lender and investor expectations will not wait for regulatory deadlines.

ESRS E4 requires companies to apply a double materiality assessment – considering both financial materiality (how nature affects the company) and impact materiality (how the company affects nature). The Omnibus revision has streamlined reporting requirements substantially: EFRAG’s draft simplified ESRS and technical advice propose roughly a 60% reduction in mandatory data points compared to the original standards, pending formal Commission adoption. Disclosures are now more tightly conditional on materiality findings, reducing unnecessary burden for companies with limited nature footprints. However, site-level location-based reporting remains central, and ESRS E4 continues to require disclosure of transition plans, policies, targets, and pressure metrics where the topic is material.

4. ENCORE and the DIRO Tools – Where to Start

Before you can run a TNFD LEAP assessment or set SBTN targets, you need to understand where nature intersects with your business. The DIRO (Dependencies, Impacts, Risks, Opportunities) tools are designed for this initial scoping. ENCORE, developed by UNEP-WCMC and Global Canopy, maps over 160 business sub-sectors to their dependencies on ecosystem services and their impacts on nature. The WWF Risk Filter Suite overlays spatial biodiversity risk data on operational footprints. IBAT (Integrated Biodiversity Assessment Tool) provides site-level data on protected areas, KBAs, and species ranges.

These tools are your diagnostic layer. They help you answer: “Where should I focus?” before you invest in deeper assessment.

5. IFC, Development Finance, and Nature Finance Frameworks

For organisations involved in development finance – whether as a project developer seeking IFC funding, an MDB, or an impact fund – the IFC Performance Standards (particularly PS6 on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) remain the dominant project-level framework. PS6 requires application of the mitigation hierarchy – avoid, minimise, mitigate, offset – and is the standard against which most commercial lenders under the Equator Principles will assess project risk. Separate from PS6, the IFC Biodiversity Finance Reference Guide is primarily a guide to eligible use-of-proceeds categories for biodiversity finance; it identifies which types of activities qualify as biodiversity finance, but does not by itself provide the methodology to verify net positive outcomes at project level. That requires additional site-specific metrics and ecological evidence.

For those seeking to go further – genuinely measuring and quantifying net positive biodiversity impacts rather than just applying the mitigation hierarchy – the WWF Biodiversity Impact Assessment Framework (BIAF) represents a promising emerging approach. BIAF provides a standardised quantitative methodology for assessing net positive impacts relative to a business-as-usual baseline, and is particularly relevant for DFIs aligning with the MDB Common Principles for Tracking Nature-Positive Finance. It is worth noting that BIAF is still in active development: the current version (BIAF-1) is a documented methodology requiring significant biodiversity expertise to apply, with a more accessible semi-automated tool (BIAF-2) still in the fundraising and development phase. For this reason, it should be treated as a leading-edge approach rather than an off-the-shelf solution.

A foundational assessment framework that cuts across all these is the Natural Capital Protocol, developed by the Capitals Coalition. The Protocol provides a step-by-step methodology for identifying, measuring, and valuing companies’ dependencies and impacts on natural capital. Many of the later frameworks – including TNFD LEAP and SBTN – draw on its conceptual architecture. If your organisation is new to natural capital thinking, the Protocol remains an excellent starting point for internal assessment even before selecting a formal reporting framework.

6. Sector-Specific Approaches

Several sectors have developed tailored guidance that sits on top of the general frameworks. Finance has the TNFD sector guidance for banks and asset managers, plus SFDR (Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation) Principal Adverse Impact indicators for biodiversity – mandatory for EU financial market participants making sustainability claims. Food and agriculture has SBTN land and water methods plus sector-specific supply chain traceability tools; food companies operating in certain commodities must also comply with the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), which requires due diligence on deforestation-linked supply chains from 30 December 2026 for large and medium operators, and 30 June 2027 for micro and small operators – though the simplified EUDR provisions (narrowing scope for downstream actors) were agreed in late 2025 and await final legal adoption. Mining has long operated under IFC PS6 and the ICMM Mining Principles. Companies with complex global supply chains should also be aware of CSDDD (the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive): post-Omnibus, CSDDD is now limited to very large companies with more than 5,000 employees and more than €1.5 billion net annual turnover, with application from July 2029 following national transposition by July 2028.

The key principle: start with the general frameworks, but layer in sector-specific tools and regulatory requirements to ensure all material issues for your industry are properly addressed.

7. Additional Frameworks This Guide Does Not Fully Cover

In the interest of not adding to the very proliferation problem this article describes, it is worth naming several important frameworks that are either foundational or increasingly relevant, but which deserve dedicated treatment beyond the scope of this piece:

GRI 101: Biodiversity (2024) – Updated in 2024, GRI 101 is a major global reporting standard for biodiversity impact disclosure, widely used by companies reporting to stakeholders outside the CSRD scope. For companies that need public impact disclosure but are not yet in scope for TNFD or SBTN, GRI 101 is often the most appropriate starting point.

ISSB / IFRS S1 – The International Sustainability Standards Board’s foundational standard, IFRS S1, already requires companies to disclose material information about nature-related risks and opportunities. In November 2025, the ISSB moved its Nature-related Disclosures project from research to active standard-setting. In April 2026, the ISSB agreed this will take the form of an IFRS Practice Statement – drawing on the TNFD framework and LEAP approach – with an exposure draft targeted for COP17 in October 2026. For investor-facing sustainability disclosure in ISSB jurisdictions (the UK, Australia, and others), material nature-related disclosures are already required under IFRS S1 today; the Practice Statement will guide how to provide them.

EU Taxonomy – The EU’s sustainable finance taxonomy defines which economic activities can be considered environmentally sustainable. Relevant biodiversity criteria apply under the “protection and restoration of biodiversity and ecosystems” environmental objective, and Do No Significant Harm (DNSH) criteria for biodiversity apply across all six environmental objectives. For companies raising EU green finance, taxonomy alignment is material. Note that the Omnibus package has simplified Taxonomy reporting templates and reduced mandatory data points; the simplified provisions are being phased in through 2026.

Nature Positive Initiative / ACT-D – The Nature Positive Initiative provides the high-level action framework (Assess, Commit, Transform, Disclose) underpinning corporate nature-positive strategy claims. It provides the “why” and the ambition level; the frameworks above provide the “how.” For any company making nature-positive claims, alignment with this initiative’s definitions and evidence requirements is increasingly expected by scrutinisers.

Biodiversity Footprinting Metrics – Multiple quantitative metrics exist for expressing biodiversity impact in a single unit, including MSA.km² (Mean Species Abundance), PDF (Potentially Disappeared Fraction of species), STAR (Species Threat Abatement and Restoration), and BFFI/GBS (Global Biodiversity Score). These metrics are not interchangeable: they measure different things, use different baselines, and produce results that should not be compared across frameworks without careful translation. If your assessment requires a footprinting metric, the choice of metric is a substantive scientific decision, not a formatting one.