How to cite this report:

Biodiversity Council (2025). Cracking the code: Using nature data to understand the impact of the ASX200. May 2026. Report. Biodiversity Council. Melbourne, Australia.

Executive Summary

Nature underpins economic activity and business performance across Australia. An estimated 49.3% of Australia’s GDP is moderately or highly dependent on natural systems, yet biodiversity and ecosystem services are in sustained decline. This deterioration presents material risks for companies and investors, including supply chain disruption, rising operating costs, regulatory and legal exposure, and reputational risk. Globally, and particularly in Australia, the pace of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation is accelerating. Ongoing degradation of the vital ecosystem services provided by nature to companies is anticipated to cause an annual global GDP reduction of to 2.3% by 2030.

This report assesses the nature-related impacts and dependencies of Australia’s ASX200 companies, with a focus on implications for listed companies and their investors. The analysis draws on data from three widely used assessment tools GIST Impact, MSCI, and S&P to provide a comparative view of nature-related impacts across sectors and companies.

We found that across all three tools, utilities, energy, materials, industrials and consumer staples consistently emerge as the highest impact sectors for biodiversity loss. These impacts are driven primarily by greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption and land use pressures. Our analysis reveals substantial variation within sectors and systematic under-measurement of impacts that occur through supply chains and financial activities where lack of data remains a significant impediment to understanding individual company supply chain impacts. Modelling of value chain impacts can provide insights at a sectoral level.

Sectors that appear to have lower impact when assessed on direct operations alone, particularly financials, IT and consumer staples, often exert significant influence on nature through capital allocation, energy and water demand, and global value chains that can create impacts on ecosystems far from the physical footprint of a company. These impacts are currently difficult to capture using existing datasets but represent a growing source of unpriced risk for investors.

While there are significant gaps in the data available to assess nature-related impacts and dependencies, these gaps do not justify inaction. The direction of risk is clear, and evidence across multiple datasets supports consistent sector level conclusions. Differences between tools primarily reflect methodological limitations, particularly the partial treatment of supply chain and financed impacts, rather than disagreement about the sectors in which nature-related risks are concentrated. Where data limits understanding of individual company impacts, engagement to encourage better company-level understanding becomes crucial.

The Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) provides a practical and credible framework to improve awareness, disclosure and decision making. Broader adoption of TNFD aligned reporting, and eventual mandatory disclosure (especially value chain-inclusive nature disclosure) would improve data quality and comparability, support investor engagement and incentivise companies to identify, manage and reduce their material impacts on nature.

Companies should assess nature-related impacts and dependencies across operations, supply chains and financial exposures; prioritise material risks using consistent methods; set time-bound targets aligned with the mitigation hierarchy; and disclose governance, strategy and metrics in line with TNFD.

Investors can use capital allocation, system stewardship and company-specific engagement to address systemic and company-specific nature-related risks. Investors can use data from assessment tools and company reporting to identify drivers of nature loss, and the investors’ points of leverage to address those key drivers. Leverage points may not necessarily be the companies with the largest direct nature impacts. It may be public policy advocacy for strong nature laws, or for government investment into nature restoration that unlocks opportunities for nature-positive private investment. It may also include engagement with companies with high impact value chains.

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