Introduction

Corporate sustainability commitments have increased significantly over the last decade, but a gap remains between these ambitions and their implementation. As nature loss, climate change and social inequality become increasingly interconnected, companies must translate commitments into changes regarding business strategy, operations and governance. Corporate transition planning provides a practical framework for this process. While climate transition planning has advanced under the Paris Agreement and various standards, nature-related planning is now emerging, guided by the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, specifically Target 15.

Climate laid the groundwork for nature

The architecture for corporate transition planning has been built over nearly a decade, starting with climate. Key developments include the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) in 2017, the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) Corporate Net-Zero Standard in 2021, and the Transition Plan Taskforce (TPT) Disclosure Framework in 2023. Nature frameworks have benefited from this foundation; the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) was explicitly modelled on TCFD, and the Science Based Targets Network (SBTN) first nature methodology was published in 2023. Consequently, the frameworks that climate built over eight years were established for nature in just two.

Objectives and scope

This report assesses how climate transition planning groundwork can accelerate corporate action on nature. It draws on disclosure data from 2023 to 2025 for 750 of the world’s largest and most influential companies across 19 industries with high exposure to nature, such as metals and mining, food production, chemicals and apparel, spanning 53 countries.

The current state of corporate disclosure on nature

The share of companies identifying drivers of nature impact, such as land-use change and pollution, has risen from 5% to 23% compared with previous benchmarks. Understanding these drivers is critical because nature loss lacks a single dominant cause; it is attributed to five interacting drivers: land- and sea-use change, direct exploitation of organisms, climate change, pollution and invasive alien species. Companies that identify these drivers are twice as likely to report progress in reducing impacts.

Identifying the drivers of nature impact

While 54% of companies claim alignment with international biodiversity goals, only 25% can justify these claims with supporting strategies or policies. Fewer than 2% of companies have set measurable targets or demonstrated progress towards halting or reversing biodiversity loss. However, every company that has done so also reported alignment with a biodiversity framework, suggesting that public claims are a necessary starting point reflecting senior-level buy-in.

The gap between climate and nature

A significant maturity gap exists between climate and nature practices. 60% of companies support international climate goals, whereas only 25% support equivalent nature goals. This disparity is evident across target-setting, finance and transition planning.

The target-setting gap

In climate, 77% of GHG emitters also set climate targets. For nature, only 12% of companies measuring biodiversity and pollution impacts set related targets. This is partly because nature lacks a universal metric like CO2 and its impacts are inherently local. However, when companies combine nature measurement with site-level spatial analysis, they are 4 times more likely to set nature targets.

The financial resource allocation gap

Only 91 (12%) of the 750 companies quantify financial allocations to climate, nature or social initiatives. Within this group, capital is skewed toward climate action, with approximately 70% of these companies directing funds there. Nature-specific topics like biodiversity and water each attract commitment from one in five or fewer of these companies. Notably, the act of making a quantified financial commitment is more strongly associated with higher benchmark scores than the actual size of the investment.

The governance gap: board expertise and executive remuneration

Both executive remuneration and board expertise are positively associated with benchmark scores. For climate, executive remuneration shows a stronger association. For nature, board expertise plays a more critical role due to the subject’s complexity. Mediation analysis shows that 20% of the association between board expertise and performance runs through executive incentives, suggesting these levers work best when used together.

The transition planning gap

The largest gap is in transition planning itself: 514 (69%) companies have a climate transition plan, compared with only 18 (2%) with a nature transition plan. No company in the sample has a nature transition plan without a climate one. However, companies taking broader climate action are roughly three times more likely to have set components for a nature transition plan.

Four pathways for accelerating nature

The report identifies four practical pathways to accelerate nature action:
1. Reporting: Extend existing disclosure processes. Companies referencing TCFD are almost ten times more likely to reference TNFD.
2. Risk management: Integrate nature into climate risk management. 80% of companies identifying nature risks do so through existing climate risk assessments.
3. Value chain mapping: Use Scope 3 tracking to map value-chain impacts. Companies with mature Scope 3 tracking are up to twice as likely to identify nature impacts and dependencies.
4. Technical synergies: Build on GHG measurement to report on air pollution. Companies measuring GHG emissions are about 6 times more likely to report on air pollution.

Conclusion and recommendations

Companies should use existing climate capabilities as a head start rather than starting from scratch. Recommendations include expanding the mandate of board committees overseeing climate risk to cover nature, and repurposing supplier data collected for Scope 3 reporting to screen for nature impacts using tools like the WWF Biodiversity Risk Filter or WRI Aqueduct. Integration must occur horizontally across sustainability issues and vertically through business strategy and operations.