The nature crisis and how it impacts business
Nature is currently facing a dramatic decline across the globe, leading to devastating consequences for biodiversity, food security, and community livelihoods. The UK, alarmingly, is one of the most nature-depleted countries on earth, ranking at the bottom of both the G7 and G20 with one in six species in the UK threatened with extinction. This decline is primarily driven by human activities such as land use change, resource exploitation, and pollution, and is further exacerbated by accelerating climate change.
The crisis affects everyone, including businesses. Recent research indicates that over half of the world’s GDP (US$58 trillion) is highly or moderately dependent on nature, making nature loss a critical business risk. The adoption of the historic Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework in 2022 has amplified the need for businesses to understand and report on their relationship with nature, a trend underscored by the recent CSRD regulations. Furthermore, new nature-related standards and frameworks, such as the Taskforce for Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), have been developed to encourage businesses to disclose and take action in this area.
Save Our Wild Isles: The Business of Nature
Discover more by watching this enlightening film, created by WWF, the RSPB, the National Trust, and Silverback Films, which reveals the extent of nature loss in the UK and explores actionable steps that employees and businesses can take to mitigate their impact.
Our approach
At PwC, we acknowledge the important link between nature enhancement and combating climate change. We have established programmes focused on supporting nature restoration and reducing our impacts, in addition to our long-standing net zero and decarbonisation journey. Given the increasing emphasis on nature within the business landscape, including among our clients, we understand the importance of comprehensively recognising our own nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks, and opportunities (DIROs) to take focused and effective action.
Our ambition
Our ambition is to contribute towards a nature-positive world. We will support Target 15 of the Global Biodiversity Framework by minimising our negative impacts, and actively playing a part in reversing nature loss through our own actions, while also supporting suppliers and clients on their nature journeys.
Understanding our own relationship with nature
In addition to the work we have been doing to minimise environmental impacts since 2007, we recently performed a gap analysis of our business readiness against the TNFD criteria and the ‘It’s Now for Nature’ - nature strategy recommendations.This led us to perform a high level evaluation of our expected DIROs for our direct operations and supply chain, in line with the TNFD’s LEAP approach.
In summary we found that, while as a professional services company, our direct impacts and dependencies on nature are comparatively low to other sectors; this is considerably higher for key supply chain sectors we rely on, as well as clients, hence crucial for our business continuity.
Our UK Nature disclosure details the outcome of our assessment in more detail, as well as the actions we are taking as a result of this.
Our interface with nature
The severity of nature-related risks are highly dependent on the location of our direct operations and supply chain. In alignment with WEF’s ’Measuring Stakeholder Capitalism’ core metrics, we’ve undertaken an analysis of our footprint in ecologically sensitive areas, including areas of high biodiversity importance (e.g. Key Biodiversity Areas or Protected areas) and areas of high water stress, using the Integrated Biodiversity Assessment Tool (IBAT) and WRI aqueduct water risk atlas tools, respectively (see diagram 1 and 2 below).[1][2]
For our supply chain, our impact explorer analysis identified at a macro level the geographical locations of our key impacts, and the scale of the impacts per location. We found these are largely concentrated in the UK (33%) and Asia Pacific (33%) regions. This information helps us understand which specific sectors and geographies in our supply chain we should work with to tackle each impact area.
Our work so far on nature
While acknowledging the risks of nature decline, acting on nature also presents a range of opportunities to collaborate with our people, clients and value chain.
- Our operations
- Our people
- Our clients
- Our supply chain
- Circular and regenerative consumption
- Carbon offsetting through nature based solutions
- Further actions taken
Our operations
Over 10 years ago we introduced green spaces to our two London office roofs, creating habitats for a range of local invertebrates and birds. Since then, we have been gradually extending our green spaces to more offices, engaging experts to ensure we are maximising the quality of the habitats and promoting biodiversity.
In 2023 we introduced edible garden planting on our Embankment Place roof, which enables our on-site caterers to use organic, home-grown produce, while engaging our people and ensuring existing habitats are complemented, not disturbed.
Our people
We work to provide our people with the tools and knowledge to support biodiversity both at home and at work, including:
- Our Nature Network, which ties together nature, wellbeing and nutrition through a series of in-person and virtual events.
- Our Veganuary Workplace Challenge, which for 6 consecutive years has invited our employees to explore plant-based diets, and reduce their personal carbon and environmental impacts.
- Our corporate membership with Kew Gardens, which is at the global forefront of biodiversity preservation.
- Our established Environmental volunteering programme, providing opportunities to support our charity partners in conserving and restoring a range of habitats across the UK.
Our clients
Supporting our clients towards nature positive
Our Global Centre for Nature Positive Business brings together expertise and expands capabilities to accelerate the global transition to a nature positive and net zero future.
Our nature experts were also directly involved in the development of the TNFD; supporting the SBTN to pilot the first Science-based targets for Nature; and the creation of the Business for Nature: Nature Strategy Handbook, alongside many other developments.
Our supply chain
The majority of our nature-related impacts and dependencies lie within our supply chain.
Agriculture-related land use was highlighted as a significant impact. In relation to this, we work closely with our catering team to evolve our food offering to provide low-impact and plant-based options.
Our catering team also opt to work directly with suppliers and social enterprises (for example Wildfarmed and Waste Knot) who provide innovative and sustainable products.
See our supply chain sustainability page for more information on how we are shaping our programmes and engagement to address this.
Circular and regenerative consumption
We are still doing what we can to minimise our direct natural resource consumption, embedding sustainability principles, including the waste hierarchy, into what we buy, how we use it and how we dispose of it. Our Going circular: Lessons Learned document explores this in detail.
Carbon offsetting through nature based solutions
Since 2007 we have reduced our carbon footprint by over 80%, offsetting any residual emissions through nature-based solutions only. By purchasing through credible and established offset brokers, the projects we support are in recognised biodiversity hotspots, and form part of the portfolio of projects supported by the global PwC network.
Further actions taken
- We were the first business to screen the ‘Save Our Wild Isles: The Business of Nature’ film to our people and clients
- We (as part of the PwC global network) are an inaugural TNFD Early Adopter
- We are also members of the TNFD and had an active role in the development of its framework and recommendations
- Alongside the TNFD secretariat, we co-lead the nature-related data catalyst initiative and chair the metrics and data working group of the TNFD
Metrics and targets
In line with TNFD recommendations, we’ve disclosed our performance against the core global indicators for disclosure relevant to PwC, as well as additional voluntary metrics that are relevant to our corporate sustainability strategy. Our disclosure has been driven by our nature-related DIROs, including material metrics that we have robust data for. We’ll look to improve disclosure against metrics relevant to PwC UK, if data and tools become available. Find out more on our Integrated Reporting Hub.
TNFD Metric[3] |
PwC Response | |
|---|---|---|
| Core disclosure metrics for dependencies and impacts | Direct operations | Supply chain |
| C1.1 Extent of land/ freshwater/ocean-use change | See KPI “PwC floor plate in or adjacent to KBAs or PAs” | Data currently unavailable. |
| C2.2 Waste generation and disposal | See KPI Waste generated Proportion recycled and reused |
|
| C3.0 Water withdrawal and consumption from areas of water scarcity | See KPI Water use in high water-stressed areas | |
TNFD Metric[3] |
|
|---|---|
| Core disclosure metrics for risks and opportunities | PwC Response |
| C7.2: Risk: Description and value of significant fines/penalties received/litigation action in the year due to negative nature-related impacts. | Tracked through IS014001 EMS. No significant fines/penalties received since FY19. |
TNFD Metric[3] |
|
|---|---|
| Relevant TNFD ‘Additional Metrics’ category | Additional PwC nature metrics |
| A22: DIRO management: value chain | See KPI: Paper procured |
| A22: DIRO management: value chain | See KPI: Assessed key suppliers with a biodiversity policy |
| A22: DIRO management: value chain | See KPI: Assessed key suppliers operating in nature hotspots who have taken action on biodiversity protection |
| A24. DIRO management: Voluntary conservation, restoration and regeneration | See KPI: Proportion of carbon offsets that support nature (%) |
TNFD Metric[3] |
|
|---|---|
| Core disclosure metrics for dependencies and impacts | PwC Response (Direct operations and Supply chain) |
| C2.1 Pollutants released to soil split by type | Not currently identified as material to PwC direct operations or supply chain |
| C2.1 Wastewater discharged | Not currently identified as material to PwC direct operations or supply chain. |
| C2.3 Plastic pollution | Data currently unavailable. |
| C2.4 Non-GHG air pollutants | Immaterial to direct operations. Supply chain data currently unavailable. |
| C3.1 Quantity of high-risk natural commodities sourced from land/ocean/ freshwater | Not currently identified as material to PwC direct operations or supply chain. |
| C4.0 Placeholder indicator[4]: Measures against unintentional introduction of invasive alien species | Not currently identified as material to PwC direct operations or supply chain. |
| C5.0 Placeholder indicators[4]:’Ecosystem condition’ and ‘Species extinction risk’ | Not currently identified as material to PwC direct operations or supply chain. |
TNFD Metric[3] |
|
|---|---|
| Core disclosure metrics for risks and opportunities | PwC Response |
| C7.0 Risk: Value of assets, liabilities, revenue and expenses that are assessed as vulnerable to nature-related transition risks (total and proportion of total). | Data currently unavailable. |
| C7.1 Risk: Value of assets, liabilities, revenue and expenses that are assessed as vulnerable to nature-related physical risks (total and proportion of total). | Data currently unavailable. |
| C7.4 Opportunity: Increase and proportion of revenue from products and services producing demonstrable positive impacts on nature with a description of impacts. | Data currently unavailable |
Notes
[1] The metrics related to these analyses are reported annually in our Integrated Reporting Hub.
[2] Dots on both maps indicate PwC UK office locations.
[3] ‘C’ indicates related TNFD ‘Core global metric’. These are metrics that apply to all sectors and need to be disclosed to align with TNFD. ‘A’ indicates TNFD ‘Additional global disclosure metrics’, which are recommended for disclosure, where relevant, to best represent an organisation’s mature nature-related issues however are not essential.
[4] The TNFD’s core global indicators include ‘placeholder metrics’, which the TNFD encourages organisations to consider and report against where possible. TNFD do acknowledge that there are not yet widely accepted metrics for these indicators, but recognise their importance.
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