Shifting from impact to Dependency?: Determinants of corporate biodiversity reporting among TNFD adopter firms

Biodiversity disclosure is gaining salience in corporate sustainability reporting as firms are expected to report their impacts on nature and dependencies on ecosystem services. This study examines changes in biodiversity disclosure quality before and after the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), focusing on its relationship to firms’ impacts on nature and dependencies on ecosystem services. We analyzed 228 non-financial firms registered as TNFD adopters and evaluated their disclosures for 2019 and 2023 using a newly developed Biodiversity Disclosure Performance Index (BDPI), which assesses disclosure quality. The BDPI covers three dimensions—assessment, practice, and target setting—while incorporating value-chain scope and both impact and dependency. Firm-level impact and dependency scores were derived from ENCORE and analyzed against BDPI using sectoral comparisons and ordinary least squares regression. The results show that biodiversity disclosure quality improved overall between 2019 and 2023. In 2019, higher BDPI scores were significantly associated with firm size and firms’ biodiversity impacts on nature. By 2023, biodiversity dependency, together with firm size, became a significant explanatory factor, while biodiversity impact was no longer significant. These findings suggest that biodiversity disclosure among TNFD adopter firms is evolving: external expectations are shifting from a primary emphasis on corporate impacts on nature toward a broader recognition of firms’ dependencies on natural capital, while firms may also be beginning to view biodiversity loss as a business risk, rather than merely as an impact of their operations.