materiality assessment – Business for Biodiversity Ireland

Want a deeper understanding of your business’ impacts and dependencies on nature? Wondering where to start with nature-related disclosures? Lost in a fog of TNFD / GRI / EFRAG / CRSD alphabet soup? Keen to develop a roadmap to Nature Positive for your business but don’t know where to start?

Business For Biodiversity Ireland is participating in the development of a new module with Trinity College Dublin’s Dr Catherine Farrell titled ‘The Business of Nature Positive’ and are inviting businesses who would be interested and willing to:

participate in Trinity Business School undergraduate / student-led research to trial the application of nature-related reporting frameworks and tools, and
explore ways to develop a roadmap to Nature Positive.

Businesses rely on many aspects of nature and climate to carry out day-to-day business. Recognising these dependencies, as well as the impacts of business on nature, new reporting requirements under the new EU Corporate Social and Responsibility Directive (CSRD), will fast become a reality for Irish businesses.

In response to the need to build capacity for present and future business needs, Trinity Business School is developing this module to be delivered to 4th year undergraduates in the 2024/2025 academic year and facilitate learning in how to apply and communicate relevant nature-related reporting and disclosure frameworks for businesses, helping to identify steps to nature positive and through these processes assist businesses to integrate nature into decision making.

We expect the input from the business to be by a nominated staff member / sustainability business champion working directly with the TCD students. We expect the work to involve at minimum approximately 8-10 hours in total over a period of 4 months (largely between December and mid-April 2025 – download a breakdown of time and commitment expected via the PDF at the end of the article.)

As a participating business, through engagement in this process, you will have opportunities to:

Benefit by receiving bespoke support in kickstarting scoping for a materiality assessment for your business
Assistance in taking the first steps in identifying data available / potential data needs for nature related reporting
Develop a deeper understanding of your business’ impacts and dependencies on nature,
Begin the thought process as to how to develop a roadmap for nature positive for your
business, and
Trial approaches / identify opportunities for communicating nature related issues to
stakeholders (internal and external).

Once we have an overview of interested businesses (small or large, of any sector), the module coordinator will follow up with a questionnaire to determine your suitability in terms of logistics and availability.

NB: Please submit an expression of interest form HERE.

This call for Expressions of Interest will close in early July.

EOI-TBS-Nature-positive-module-final-27_5_2024 Download

Materiality is the quality of being relevant or significant, and in terms of business and finance, materiality applies to all items that must be recorded or reported in detail in a business’s financial statements as reasonably likely to impact investors’ decision-making.

Double materiality: For corporate sustainability reporting, the concept of double materiality applies – it goes beyond that which affects the company and its investors, extending to information on how the firm is impacting society and the environment.

The EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) mandates a double materiality assessment for around 50,000 reporting companies from 2024 onwards.

The European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) explains that a double materiality assessment takes two perspectives, sometimes referred to as an ‘outside in’ / ‘inside out’ approach:

              (1) an impact perspective “when it pertains to the [entity’s] material actual or potential, positive or negative impacts on people or the environment over the short-, medium- and long-term”; and

              (2) a financial perspective “if it triggers or could reasonably be expected to trigger material financial effects on the [entity].”

A double materiality assessment must cover both a business’ own operations as well as upstream and downstream value chain. It must consider the topics and subtopics covered in the 10 ESRS topical standards. These include climate change, pollution, water, biodiversity, circular economy and topics relating to governance and the workforce.

Detailed reporting on each is required only if the company decides, following a double materiality assessment involving all stakeholders, that it is ‘material’ or relevant under the reporting rules. Where a company determines a topic to not be material, it must explain its rationale in detail. It is still necessary to have a long-term strategy in place to address your organisation’s future impacts and dependencies on nature (and future risks resulting from) biodiversity loss and climate change.

https://www.charteredaccountants.ie/Accountancy-Ireland/Articles2/Technical/Latest-News/Article-item/the-corporate-sustainability-reporting-directive-getting-to-grips-with-double-materiality

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Glossary: Materiality and Double Materiality

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