Какво се случи

The ISSB, the IFRS Foundation board whose climate standard the UK's own sustainability reporting standards are based on, launched a consultation on nature reporting on 22 October 2026, during the UN biodiversity summit, COP17. As Mark Segal reported for ESG Today, the proposals come as a non-mandatory Practice Statement rather than a new standard. The facts below are checked against the IFRS Foundation's own release and summary.

  • What it is: an exposure draft of IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Practice Statement 1 Nature-related Disclosures. It is meant to help companies tell investors about nature-related risks and opportunities, including those that arise from what a business depends on (water, for example) and how it affects nature.
  • How it builds on S1 and S2: IFRS S1 already requires material information on all sustainability risks, nature included. The draft adds detail on how to do it, is applied together with IFRS S1 and S2, and does not change either.
  • TNFD: the ISSB says it drew extensively on the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures, and that companies using the TNFD framework will be well positioned to apply it.
  • What it would ask for: how a company responds to nature-related risks in its strategy, how resilient its business is (using scenario analysis), the amount and share of assets or activities vulnerable to nature-related risks, and attention to the locations of assets and activities across the value chain.
  • Status: a 120-day consultation closing on 19 February 2027. The ISSB is also asking whether the content should become a full Standard instead.

Voluntary, for now

The form matters. In the ISSB's own words, a company would not need to comply with a Practice Statement to state compliance with ISSB Standards, and a country would not need to adopt it to be described as adopting ISSB Standards. A country could, however, decide to require it. So this is a proposal, and even once final it would bind no one unless a regulator chooses to make it do so.

In the UK, the relevant rules are UK SRS S1 and S2, published in February 2026 as the UK's versions of IFRS S1 and S2. Under FCA rules finalised in September 2026, listed companies report against them on a comply or explain basis for accounting periods starting on or after 1 January 2027. The nature draft is not part of UK SRS. Whether the UK ever adds a final version would be a separate decision. Our UK SRS guide covers who reports and when.

Какво означава за малък доставчик в Обединеното кралство

Nothing here creates a legal duty for a small or medium-sized business. The effect, if it comes, will be the same route carbon took: through customers. UK SRS S1 already asks a listed company to report material sustainability risks across its value chain, and the draft puts weight on where assets and activities are, including suppliers. A large customer that chooses to report on nature can only describe its supply chain with information from its suppliers, so expect a few nature questions to appear next to the carbon questions in supplier questionnaires: where your sites are, how much water you use, how much waste you produce and where it goes, and what your main materials are. Our post on what UK SRS S2 means for suppliers covers the carbon side of those questionnaires, and our guide to TNFD for small businesses explains the framework the draft is built on. Over 800 organisations have already committed to TNFD reporting, as we covered in our post from COP17.

Какво да направите сега

  1. Keep the carbon basics, by site. Energy, fuel, water and waste for a stated 12-month period. These are the figures customers already ask for, and the ones nature questions start from.
  2. Record each site's address. Location runs all the way through the draft.
  3. Turn water bills into cubic metres, and ask your waste contractor for tonnes by type and destination.
  4. Don't overclaim. If a questionnaire asks whether you report under the ISSB nature Practice Statement, the honest answer today is that it is still a proposal.

Where water shows up in your carbon figures

Water is a good example of one figure serving both questions. An illustrative food manufacturer using 3,000 cubic metres of mains water a year, with about 2,850 going back to the sewer, has 0.57 tonnes CO2e from supply (0.1913 kg CO2e per cubic metre) and 0.49 tonnes from treatment (0.17088 kg per cubic metre) with the 2026 government factors, 1.06 tonnes in all. The carbon is small next to energy for most businesses, but the cubic metres are exactly what a nature question asks for. Cutting water use by a tenth would save about 0.11 tonnes CO2e a year, and use 300 fewer cubic metres of water.

Как помага Carbon Recycling

Carbon Recycling is a carbon reporting tool, not a nature assessment. It keeps the records a nature question starts from. You set up each site with its address and postcode, then record energy, fuel, water supplied, wastewater, and waste by material and treatment route. Each entry is converted to CO2e with the government factors and kept year by year, with a report for each site. The free supplier questionnaire answer bank drafts answers to the carbon questions that sit beside the new ones, and the Climate risk add-on checks each site's postcode against the official flood maps and Met Office projections, for questions about where your sites are exposed.