TNFD Nature-Related Opportunities: Resource Efficiency, Products and Nature-Based Solutions

Educational practitioner material. Illustrative scenarios and wording require adaptation to the organisation’s facts, chosen materiality approach and reporting context.

Nature opportunities attract enthusiasm because they can combine resilience, innovation, market access and environmental outcomes. The reporting risk is that the positive label is applied before the activity, outcome and evidence have been separated. A water-efficiency project may lower cost but shift pressure to another catchment. A restoration project may improve habitat but depend on uncertain long-term maintenance. A “biodiversity product” may finance activities without proving ecological additionality. A new material may reduce one impact and increase another.

A robust opportunity process therefore asks two questions at the same time: what value can the organisation create or protect, and what positive outcome for nature is reasonably expected and evidenced? Neither side should be assumed from the other.

Figure 2. TNFD nature-related opportunity development model. The diagram separates issue, activity, evidence, decision and disclosure and includes a trade-off test.

TNFD links opportunities to dependencies and impacts on nature. The final Recommendations describe nature-related opportunities as activities that create positive outcomes for organisations and nature. The 2025 discussion paper develops a common language for separating the activity, organisational outcome and nature outcome, but it remains discussion material. The practical discipline is valuable: an activity is not the same as an outcome, and an output is not the same as a change in the state of nature.

Resource efficiency is often the easiest category to quantify because organisations already monitor input and cost data. It can also reduce physical and transition risk. However, intensity improvement alone may not reduce total pressure if production grows, if the saved resource is used elsewhere or if efficiency causes a rebound effect. The business case should therefore distinguish unit efficiency, absolute use, location-specific pressure and the state of the affected ecosystem.

A product or service can create a nature-related opportunity when it helps protect, manage, restore or regenerate nature, reduces a customer’s negative impact, or lowers a material dependency. The assessment should cover the full lifecycle and avoid transferring impact from the customer’s visible process to an upstream or end-of-life stage. Product claims should be narrower than the ambition until outcome evidence is available.

Questions for a product opportunity business case

Which customer problem and nature-related issue does the product address?

What is the counterfactual: what would happen without the product or service?

Which output is under the organisation’s control and which nature outcome depends on customer behaviour or external conditions?

What upstream materials, land, water, energy, chemicals or data dependencies could create new impacts?

What standards, certification, verification or scientific methods support the claim?

How will revenue, margin, adoption, customer retention and downside risk be monitored alongside nature outcomes?

Nature-based solutions are not a separate final TNFD opportunity category, but they can sit within products and services, resource efficiency, sustainable use or ecosystem protection, restoration and regeneration. Examples include wetland restoration for flood regulation, watershed action for water quality, mangrove restoration for coastal resilience and agroforestry for soil, yield and habitat benefits.

A credible nature-based solution needs more than a planting or area figure. The business case should test ecological suitability, additionality, durability, climate interactions, maintenance, land tenure, Indigenous and local community rights, benefit sharing, potential displacement of impacts and what happens if the ecosystem response is slower or different from expected. Hybrid solutions combining ecological and engineered measures may be more resilient than either alone.

1. Start from a material DIRO or strategic need. Use the dependency, impact, risk and location register rather than a free-standing list of environmental ideas.

2. Describe the activity and counterfactual. State what will change, for whom, where, over what period and what is expected without the activity.

3. Define the organisational benefit. Identify revenue, cost, resilience, asset, insurance, financing, market-access or stakeholder value and the assumptions behind it.

4. Define the nature outcome. Specify the impact pressure, state-of-nature or ecosystem-service result, geographic boundary, baseline, method and time horizon.

5. Test dependencies and trade-offs. Assess inputs, ecological thresholds, value-chain impacts, climate interactions, affected stakeholders, leakage, rebound and failure modes.

6. Build the investment and control case. Record capex or opex, owner, partners, approvals, milestones, safeguards, verification, maintenance and exit conditions.

7. Approve metrics, targets and claim language. Separate outputs from outcomes and use contribution wording where attribution or system-wide outcomes cannot be demonstrated.

8. Monitor, learn and update. Compare realised business and nature outcomes with the case, disclose limitations and change the strategy where evidence does not support the original assumption.

Example 1 - resource efficiency in beverage production

Illustrative scenario. A beverage group proposes a water-recirculation project at a plant in a high-risk basin. The business case estimates lower abstraction fees, lower treatment cost and fewer production interruptions. The nature case measures absolute and intensity withdrawals, seasonal flow, discharge quality and basin context. The project is approved only after the team tests energy use, concentrate disposal and whether planned volume growth could offset the reduction. Public wording refers to reduced withdrawals at the named plant and does not claim basin restoration.

Example 2 - a biodiversity data service

Illustrative scenario. A technology company develops a service that helps land managers monitor habitat condition. The commercial opportunity is subscription revenue and customer retention. The nature outcome depends on whether customers use the data to change management decisions, so the company separates platform output from ecosystem outcome. It reports coverage, data quality and decision use, while any claim about improved habitat is supported by customer-level evidence and limitations.

Example 3 - wetland restoration for flood resilience

Illustrative scenario. An industrial estate funds wetland restoration to reduce flood peaks and improve habitat. The investment case compares an engineered-only option, a nature-based option and a hybrid. It assesses land rights, hydrological modelling, habitat baseline, maintenance, community access and uncertainty. The board approves a staged hybrid solution with monitoring triggers. The disclosure describes the intended resilience and restoration outcomes and avoids claiming success before outcome data exist.

Why it works: the wording names the issue, location, investment, business effect, target basis, controls, trade-offs and claim limitation. It does not turn an intended activity into an achieved ecosystem outcome.