Neipo Primer
Modules

Module 3 / 5 · 15min

Module 3

TNFD LEAP basics

Where to start, and what to disclose

Learning objectives

  • Can explain the four LEAP steps in order
  • Can map the four TNFD pillars onto TCFD
  • Can list the Locate boundary to look at (direct, upstream, downstream)

What TNFD is

The Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures is a framework for companies and financial institutions to assess and disclose nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks and opportunities. Recommendations v1.0 were published in September 2023. The structure extends climate TCFD to nature; the four pillars are governance, strategy, risk and impact management, and metrics and targets.

LEAP is “how to walk the analysis”

Locate: identify where the business interfaces with nature (direct operations, upstream, downstream; biomes, conservation-priority locations, freshwater, marine and terrestrial). Evaluate: evaluate dependencies and impacts in those places. Assess: evaluate how they affect finance (physical, transition and systemic risks, and opportunities). Prepare: put in place responses, targets, disclosure and organisational arrangements. LEAP is a voluntary internal process; it sits on a different layer from disclosure itself (the four pillars).

So you do not stumble at Locate

Writing only the head-office address and stopping is typical of beginners. For construction it is quarries and sites; for food, feedstock origins; for a bank, the sectors and regions of lending counterparties. Tools such as IBAT, ENCORE, the WWF Biodiversity Risk Filter and global land-use data can help. Tools are a starting point; land-use permits and supplier data on site are the substance.

Metrics are “state, pressure, response”

As core global metrics, TNFD sets out impact metrics (for example area of land converted), metrics related to dependencies, and response metrics. Nature has no single currency analogous to climate’s tCO2e. That metrics differ by biome is what first unsettles climate officers. That is why Locate must first decide “which ecosystem.”

Takeaways

  • LEAP is internal analysis; the four pillars are the disclosure structure. Do not explain them mixed together.
  • Locate is not the head-office address; it is the geography of the value chain.
  • Nature has no single metric analogous to carbon tonnes.