2025 Registrant Impact | Nature-related financial disclosures

2025 was an exciting year for nature and sustainability! I’ve begun aligning the Environment Agency with the recommendations of the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD). TNFD guides organisations to assess their nature-related dependencies and impacts and asks how they will manage the resulting risks and opportunities.  

By understanding this whole picture, we can improve our operational resilience and increase the public value we create. I’ve started developing the evidence-base through our first Nature and Biodiversity Footprint, exploring a broader set of environmental indicators than the more familiar carbon footprint. The real impact of this work will be across the long term, but evidence is the first big step. 

I’ve therefore also been thinking about how we transform the evidence into real change. As with embodied carbon, embodied ecological impacts exist throughout supply chains via impacts like natural resource use and land use change. These are potentially huge and have long been overlooked.  

Building carbon reductions into supply chain contracts has been such a powerful tool for driving innovation, and now we’re exploring what this could look like for nature. I’m working with others on establishing what good looks like for nature-related sustainability contract clauses. There’s so much to learn in these emerging spaces and many lessons to share.  

I’ve been supported on this adventure by so many people but I especially want to thank Jacobs, Little Blue Research, Eunomia, The Chancery Lane Project and my amazing peers across the Defra Group.