Nature Reporting Delivers Five Times Value Over Traditional Accounting

The case for nature-based financial reporting is strengthening beyond regulatory compliance as early adopters demonstrate tangible business value. For companies grappling with climate disclosure fatigue, sustainability leaders at the Impact X ESG Reporting & Disclosure Summit revealed that integrating nature considerations can actually streamline reporting whilst uncovering previously hidden value.

Quantifying the Hidden Value of Nature

Rayne van den Berg, who pioneered natural capital accounting as CFO at Forico, Tasmania's largest private forest manager, discovered that traditional accounting was missing critical value drivers. When challenged on spending $1 million annually maintaining 80,000 hectares of conservation land with no balance sheet value, van den Berg's team developed natural capital accounts that revealed a startling truth.

"We started measuring taking all those litres tonnes and hectares putting a value on it to what that meant to society for carbon sequestration and habitat and water provisioning," van den Berg explained. The results were transformative: "Those reports got presented like a balance sheet and had conservatively five times more value on those balance sheets than our traditional balance sheet."

This revelation caught investors' attention overnight, fundamentally changing how the company positioned itself. "We weren't a forestry company anymore. We were a natural capital steward and manager," van den Berg said.

The Supply Chain Imperative

For companies with clear nature dependencies, the business case becomes even more compelling. Sally Townsend, Head of Sustainability at Blackmores Group, oversees the company's sustainability vision aligned to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. She described how the company's journey into nature reporting began with a stark realisation about their flagship product.

"Our number one product in our portfolio of natural health care products is fish oil and it's very hard to grow a fish oil category if you don't have access to fish," Townsend explained. Climate change impacts on ocean temperatures, currents, and acidification directly threaten the small, oily fish like anchovies that the company depends on.

The health implications extend far beyond Blackmores' business model. "50% of the products you'd be prescribed by your doctor would be derived from natural origins," Townsend noted. "For us, biodiversity loss and a climate crisis is also a health crisis."

Integration Drives Efficiency

Rather than treating nature as an additional reporting burden, leading companies are discovering synergies with existing climate disclosure efforts. Van den Berg advocates for an integrated approach: "I would actually really encourage businesses that haven't started on climate to do nature and climate together because it's a lot more efficient way to do it."

This integration proved crucial when van den Berg worked with the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD). "I'm not going to do climate separate to nature because we think of climate as being one leg of a four-legged chair," she explained.

Overcoming the Getting-Started Barrier

For organisations finding nature reporting daunting, panellists offered practical first steps. Townsend recommended the Australian Climate Leaders Coalition's "nat start" tool, powered by PwC and freely available online. "It is super entry-level. It is basically talking you through it," she said.

The tool addresses common concerns about expertise gaps: "Don't get imposter syndrome and think I don't know what biomes are. I don't have all the answers to this. It's just more important that you get started and start developing that narrative."

Sam Donaldson from Laing O'Rourke emphasised a phased approach to TNFD reporting. "We're not responding against all recommendations. We've done a gap analysis, but for our first disclosures we're just starting with governance and strategy recommendations because they're considered to be the right foundational springboard."

Strategic Implications Beyond Compliance

The discussion revealed that consumer demand alone won't drive the necessary transformation. "Consumer appetite to address nature risk is not as high as it needs to be," Townsend acknowledged. Instead, supply chain resilience and access to capital are emerging as the primary drivers.

Van den Berg's experience with carbon markets offers insight into the evolving nature finance landscape. "The market's actually stratifying carbon units based on their Providence and the co-benefits," she explained, noting different pricing structures based on quality and co-benefits.

Beyond Traditional Risk Management

The construction industry's relationship with nature illustrates the complexity of dependencies often overlooked in traditional risk assessments. Donaldson highlighted a blind spot in his sector: "If you were to ask the question, what's our reliance or dependency on nature in the construction industry? I think you'd get a lot of blank faces."

His sector's dependency runs deep, from water for drilling and compaction to concrete—"the second most used commodity on the planet outside of water"—which requires substantial natural resources. This realisation is driving collaborative industry efforts beyond traditional impact reduction.

The conversation revealed nature reporting as more than compliance—it's strategic intelligence that quantifies previously invisible value and risk. As van den Berg concluded: "We weren't just trying to solve for one problem we were trying to solve for multiple concurrent problems at the same time."

For sustainability leaders, the message is clear: nature reporting isn't an additional burden but a pathway to more comprehensive risk management and value creation. The question isn't whether to start, but how quickly organisations can integrate these insights into their strategic planning.