Accountants have a crucial role to play in terms of the concepts, principles, challenges and opportunities of nature-related reporting.
The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants deemed these professionals as 'stewards of organisational resilience and enablers of trust and transparency between organisations and financial markets'.
In a recent report by the ACCA, titled Empowering business: navigating nature-related reporting, they call on accountants to get to grips with this matter as these finance professionals engage boards and executive management on nature-related reporting, thereby driving meaningful action to tackle the sustainability-related challenges.
ACCA wants financial professionals to use this report as a way of engaging with boards and executive management.
Challenges and opportunities
ACCA says accountants face challenges and opportunities in sourcing, disseminating and reporting on nature-related data, including both upskilling and ethical considerations. However, the work is consistent with the profession’s long-held role of underpinning long-term business resilience.
The accounting body's report suggests accountants should:
- Secure management commitment: nature-related reporting might require undertaking voluntary reporting to align with peers’ practices, stakeholder expectations and cross-jurisdictional regulations.
- Undertake stakeholder mapping: organisations need to identify their key stakeholders and regulatory reporting obligations to inform the approach that they take to nature-related reporting.
- Ensure alignment of targets and commitments to international commitments.
ACCA’s research found that there is considerable room for improvement in the adoption of nature-related reporting, as well as the quality of the disclosure by early adopters of existing frameworks.
The report also examines the current global state of nature-related reporting, which relies on several different frameworks and guidelines and examples of best practices of nature-related reporting.
For the future, the report identifies challenges facing the profession in the area of nature-related reporting and the part it has in driving action to restore natural habitats and ecosystems.
