ENCORE, IBAT and Aqueduct for TNFD: What Each Tool Can and Cannot Do

Figure 1. Compare three screening lenses and show the validation gate.

A nature assessment can look advanced while remaining technically weak if several colourful maps are combined without defining the question each layer answers. Sector potential, biodiversity sensitivity and water risk are related but not interchangeable. A high sector score may justify a borrower data request, but it does not prove exposure or vulnerability. A protected-area overlap may require ecological review, but it does not show that the organisation causes a material pressure. High basin stress may matter greatly or little depending on withdrawal, discharge, substitutes, controls and catchment context.

TNFD’s LEAP approach provides a sequence for locating interfaces with nature, evaluating dependencies and impacts, assessing risks and opportunities and preparing responses and disclosure. Tools accelerate screening. The organisation remains responsible for the input population, the use of the output, professional judgement and the final DIRO or materiality decision.

ENCORE’s 2024 knowledge base assesses potential relationships between 271 economic activities and 25 ecosystem services and identifies potential pressures on nature. Its materiality ratings are useful for comparing a specified dependency or pressure across activities and sectors. This makes ENCORE particularly helpful for portfolio heatmaps, value-chain triage and mapping internal sector codes to nature-related screening questions.

What it can do. Identify potential sector/activity dependencies and pressures, create a common starting taxonomy and prioritise where activity or location data should be requested.

What it cannot do. Confirm the state of nature at a specific location, measure the entity’s actual impact, establish financial effects or replace company/site evidence.

Control point. Preserve the ENCORE release, classification crosswalk, rating interpretation and the method used to aggregate multi-activity entities.

IBAT integrates authoritative global biodiversity datasets, including protected and conserved areas, Key Biodiversity Areas and IUCN Red List information. It becomes most useful when the organisation has reliable points, polygons or asset coordinates. IBAT can help identify locations that warrant deeper due diligence, but global datasets and derived screening reports do not prove species presence, critical habitat, actual pressure or the effectiveness of management at a site.

Access and licence. IBAT states that commercial organisations should access the relevant datasets through the IBAT platform. Free access can support some reporting uses; subscriptions provide advanced functionality. The team must still follow the applicable terms for data, reports and redistribution.

Version control. Record the IBAT report or extraction date and the component dataset dates. IBAT states that the protected-area data is updated monthly, KBA data twice yearly and the IUCN Red List two to three times each year.

Validation. Use site plans, surveys, local databases, species/habitat specialists and affected-stakeholder evidence where the result affects a material decision or claim.

Aqueduct 4.0 provides 13 indicators spanning water quantity, quality and reputational dimensions. It supports baseline and future analysis, including projections centred on 2030, 2050 and 2080. Several indicators use a global hydrological model and sub-basin information. WRI explicitly describes Aqueduct as a prioritisation tool: overall water risk cannot be directly measured as one observable outcome and results should be augmented by local and regional deep dives.

What it can do. Compare many sites on a consistent global basis, identify sub-basins for investigation and support future scenario screening.

What it cannot do. Replace a facility water balance, permit review, catchment study, utility-resilience assessment or local stakeholder analysis.

Claim control. A high Aqueduct score should not be described as the facility’s measured water impact or guaranteed financial loss.

Define the decision. State whether the output supports screening, due diligence, a risk decision, a metric or a disclosure.

Reconcile the input population. Control entities, sectors, activities and locations; document crosswalks and missing coordinates.

Run the screening lenses separately. Preserve the original output and metadata rather than collapsing unlike scores immediately.

Investigate priority results. Request exact activities, coordinates, permits, production, land, water and management information.

Validate locally. Use local data, field studies, specialists and affected-stakeholder evidence where consequence is material.

Translate to DIROs. Document the causal pathway from nature interface to dependency/impact, risk/opportunity and business consequence.

Approve and disclose. Record judgement, uncertainty, residual data gaps and the owner who approved the result.

A diversified food and materials group uses ENCORE to identify high potential water dependency, land-use pressure and pollution pathways. Aqueduct screening narrows 140 sites to 18 high-priority basins. IBAT identifies six possible biodiversity-sensitive locations. The group then obtains site water balances, permits, commodity origins, habitat studies and grievance information. Two high-scoring plants prove operationally resilient because withdrawals are low and closed-loop controls are effective; a medium-ranked site becomes a priority because it relies on a degraded wetland with no substitute supply. The final DIRO register therefore differs from the initial heatmap.

Calling a tool rating “our materiality”. The rating describes screening potential, not the entity-specific conclusion.

Using headquarters instead of operating assets. This can create false location matches and miss real interfaces.

Ignoring access and redistribution terms. Commercial reporting and reproduction of data or screenshots can involve different permissions.

Applying one universal buffer. Ecological and hydrological relevance depends on the feature and pressure pathway.

Creating one unexplained nature score. Composite scores can hide the original evidence and create false precision.

Omitting data gaps. Readers cannot understand coverage if missing locations and proxy classifications are invisible.

Figure 2. Show six controls for a traceable tool output.

Prerequisite: TNFD Explained - Recommendations, LEAP, DIROs and how to start.

Apply next: TNFD LEAP Approach - a step-by-step guide.

Evidence: Geospatial Data for TNFD - coordinates, maps, data quality and confidentiality.

Advanced: TNFD metrics, targets and the limits of composite biodiversity scores.