A Major First: Breaking Ground with a TNFD LEAP Assessment

We are grateful to the teams at WSP for helping us begin to understand our nature-related risks and opportunities as we work to improve our sustainability reporting, prepare for regulatory compliance, and improve our knowledge of our impacts and dependencies on nature throughout our value chain.

The client

The client

Finding the starting point

The client, a global food and home health product leader, has an expansive operations portfolio spread across many locations worldwide. With a footprint in many different ecosystems, a strong connection to raw and genetic materials, and a value chain stretching across multiple sectors, the organization needed a cohesive understanding of their current dependencies and impacts on nature to draft effective sustainability strategies and consider science-based nature-positive targets for biodiversity and climate action.

Aware that most of their biodiversity impacts were likely to come from sourcing, the company chose to start with operations to identify which of their many subsectors was most at risk. They also wanted a thorough assessment of the ways in which their manufacturing facilities impact and depend on nature, delivered in a manner that aligned with the Taskforce on Nature-Related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) framework.

For this assessment, they turned to us, leading providers of biodiversity and nature assessments that enable organizations to conserve, enhance and protect ecosystems worldwide. Our team performed a comprehensive nature-related risk and opportunity assessment upon which the organization can build their future nature- and biodiversity-related strategies.

Manufacturing sites assessed

100+

Industry peers compared

5

locations identified as Key Biodiversity Areas

21%

Location

Worldwide

A science-based approach

Our TNFD assessment followed the LEAP approach (Locate, Evaluate, Assess, Prepare) and used their specialised LEAP toolkit to collect information on the business importance of activities in direct operations. The ENCORE tool assessed and identified the related impacts and dependencies for each sub-industry. Using that information, the project team ranked the global manufacturing sites’ impact and dependency ratings to generate a heatmap, a complete visualization of the highest scores. For each sub-industry, we used sector research and expert interviews to explore how the organization’s business activities and production processes interfaced with the ecosystem services provided by natural capital.

With abovementioned results and additional data from the Environmental Performance Index and the Biodiversity Intactness Index, the manufacturing sites were then fed into the WWF Biodiversity Risk Filter (BRF) tool to calculate biodiversity risk scores and identify a list of biodiversity sensitive locations.

As an SBTN Service Provider, our team also assessed the client’s ability to achieve their nature-related sustainability commitments and ambitions, including research on biodiversity-related trends and best practices and a peer benchmark. Our team uses Science-Based Target Network (SBTN) methods, which emphasize the interconnectedness of biodiversity, climate change, and sustainable business practices. The team gauged the company’s current data to set a target boundary, including the upstream value chain, direct operations, and detailed pathway models, to set suitable goals with appropriate timelines. The effort culminated in a roadmap to pursue implementation of a science-based land and water targets.

The Impact

Practical and insightful, the results gave the organization a thorough understanding of the corporate nature action landscape through a science-based lens that provides them with robust information. Our findings gave the client the critical evidence they required to improve their nature and biodiversity governance, risk management, strategy, target setting, and disclosure.

Our tailored assessment identified the organization’s global risks and opportunities while examining local manufacturing impacts. This dual focus considered the company’s impacts on its operational communities as well as stakeholders across the worldwide value chain. Equally important, the assessment provided them with a benchmark, measuring their level of biodiversity efforts in comparison to 5 peers.

Today, the company has greater transparency into their current biodiversity ambitions and a unity of purpose shared across the global organization. Going forward, they understand the risks and opportunities to be included in their Board of Director discussions, their public disclosures, and the development of their corporate sustainability and environmental strategies.

The results of the SBTN feasibility analysis put the organization ahead of the curve on nature-related target setting, disclosure, and regulatory compliance. Such stakeholder consensus makes the client future-ready, poised to decrease their risks and maximize their ESG opportunities.

Takeaways

The client gained science-based support for their nature-relative ambitions, including:

Comparison of their biodiversity efforts in relations to 5 industry peers
Thorough assessment of the nature-related impacts, dependencies, risks and opportunities for more than 100 manufacturing sites
Identification of their most at-risk sector
An understanding of the ESG risks and opportunities to be included in public disclosures
Comprehensive analysis of nature-positive targets
Stakeholder consensus of the company’s current biodiversity status and next steps

Most importantly, our team gave the organization science-based evidence on which to draft their future strategies to support sustainability, climate action, and biodiversity.