Despite an increasing awareness of the material risks that biodiversity loss presents to business, and the growing availability of biodiversity measurement methodologies available, use has been limited to a few front-runner companies. Measures of corporate biodiversity performance are still not broadly agreed upon, creating confusion and preventing broader market uptake.

Align came into being with the objective to co-develop recommendations for principles and criteria for biodiversity measurement and valuation that are scientifically robust and fit for purpose. This will be achieved by describing common elements of biodiversity measurement for companies. Our goal is for these concepts to be integrated into voluntary and mandatory frameworks for disclosure and target setting to facilitate an increase in uptake by business.

The recommendations aim to support broader sustainability measurement and disclosure efforts currently under development including the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) revision of its biodiversity indicators, the Taskforce for Nature-Related Financial Disclosures framework (TNFD), the Science Based Targets Network guidance (SBTN), and Align’s sister project – Transparent.

After various consultation rounds with experts and business practitioners from our Technical Hub and Community of Practice, the Align team is looking for public comment on the V01 Draft, during consultation in June. We welcome all businesses to participate in this and encourage those who are interested, to register for our Align Community here!

The anticipated next steps and opportunities for involvement include:

• 13 April 2022 – Presentation of the V01 Draft to Align’s Community of Practice
• April 2022 – Review from the Advisory board, Technical Hub, Community of Practice
• May 2022 – Finalisation of V01 Draft of the recommendations
• June 2022 – Public consultation