sustainability – Business for Biodiversity Ireland

The European Commission has adopted targeted “quick fix” amendments to the first set of European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS). This is aimed at reducing the burden and increasing certainty for companies that had to start reporting for financial year 2024 (commonly referred to as “wave one” companies).

According to the current ESRS, companies reporting on financial year 2024 can omit information on, amongst other things, the anticipated financial effects of certain sustainability‑related risks. The “quick fix” amendment, which applies from financial year 2025, will allow them to omit that same information for financial years 2025 and 2026.

For financial years 2025 and 2026, wave one companies with more than 750 employees will benefit from most of the same phase-in provisions that currently apply to companies with up to 750 employees. A summary of the modifications can be found here.

Wave one companies were not captured by the “stop‑the‑clock” Directive, which delayed sustainability reporting requirements for companies that report from financial year 2025 and 2026 (so‑called “wave two” and “wave three” companies) by two years. This Directive was part of the Omnibus I package adopted by the Commission in February 2025.

The Commission is working on a broader revision of the ESRS, with the aim of substantially reducing the number of data requirements, clarifying provisions deemed unclear and improving consistency with other pieces of legislation. It is expected that this review will be completed by financial year 2027.

Despite the ongoing delays and simplifications at EU level, assessing and reporting on your organisation’s nature impacts is still a vital and urgent part of any organisation’s long-term strategy – ignoring your dependencies and impacts on nature means ignoring the potential risks, both financial and reputational, to your business as well as the physical risks that damaging and degrading nature does to our planet, society and to your business’s resilience and longevity.

You can be a leader in your field by tackling these issues now – we’ll show you where to start. Sign up to our Nature Strategy Accelerator Programme today – join the Discovery Track for free to learn more – or contact our Business Development Manager Dr Maria Fitzpatrick for a chat on how to get started on a solid Nature Strategy for your organisation. We will be accepting new businesses to our Action and Strategy Tracks now ahead of our 2026 programme of workshops, peer learning and expert one-on-one guidance – email manager@businessforbiodiversity.ie

Our Roadmap to Nature Positive will help you set the right foundations for reporting your nature-related impacts and dependencies under new regulations – it’s also useful if you are considering reporting these voluntarily.

Regardless of current legal obligations, there is a responsibility for all organisations, no matter their size, to understand their impacts and dependencies on nature and take measures to halt and reverse these. Business as usual is not an option, given the decline in global biodiversity and the interlinked climate crisis, the effects of which are already being felt on human health and society, as well as economically.

First off, you need to know your obligations on nature disclosures. Within the Roadmap – available to BFBI members when you sign up and log in to the Members Area of our site – we look at reporting for different business types and scales. We also outline the relationship between EU Taxonomy and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD).

Goal 3 provides information on your legal obligations, in particular if your business falls under the scope of CSRD; and if/when your business needs to start reporting. There is a different timeline for companies of various scales, starting in 2024 for certain companies. For businesses that do not currently fall under the scope of CSRD, we outline how it may relate to your business down the line.

Considering the value chain

Many businesses that are not within the scope of CSRD are still part of the value chain (aka Scope 3) of larger organisations. These larger organisations may well request Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) information from their value chain members – and organisations who are not ready for this may find that they lose out when it comes to larger organisations making supplier choices.

Once you know your obligations under the new regulations, the next step will be to explore the reporting standards to find the best fit for your business. Members can check out our Guidance A3.2 on Standardising Reports. Standardised reporting helps organisations increase transparency and communicate their sustainability initiatives.

We’ll give you an overview of the reporting standards that are internationally recognised and aligned with each other with explainers on how all the emerging different policies, frameworks and standards are linked.

Already feeling the overwhelm? Take a breath and have a look at our easy-to-read member guidance documents to give yourself a basic understanding. You’re not expected to be an expert right away and the Platform is here to help. If you have questions, all members are invited to our quarterly Member’s Forum, and you can upload your questions or comments to the online dashboard so that we can discuss them at our meet-ups.

Register here: https://businessforbiodiversity.ie/register-all/

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