The demand side for biodiversity and ecosystem-service data — the regimes that ask for numbers, as distinct from essential variables, which is the proposed layer that would supply them. Deliberately the counterpart to product-level carbon regulation, which plays the same role for carbon.
⟨Note: everything here comes from a single source,
Kim et al. (2026), which
describes the state-side frameworks in detail and the corporate/financial
ones only in passing. The TNFD, NPI and NGFS entries below are therefore
thin and second-hand — no primary source for any of them is in
sources/. Treated as a register of what exists and needs ingesting, not
as a characterisation.⟩
The two state-side regimes
KM-GBF — Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework
Of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. Four overarching goals — state of nature (A), benefits for society (B), benefit-sharing from genetic resources and digital sequence information (C), means of implementation (D) — underpinned by 23 action-oriented targets covering threats to biodiversity, meeting people’s needs, and enabling conditions (SCBD 2022).
Its monitoring framework, as of SCBD 2025:
| Indicator category | Count |
|---|---|
| Headline | 42 |
| Component | 52 |
| Complementary (unique) | 110 |
| Binary | 15 |
Headline indicators are “a core element of the reporting process”; parties report progress through NBSAPs (National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans) and NRs (National Reports).
It prescribes concrete indicators. That is the structural fact that distinguishes it from SEEA EA.
The predecessor regime, the Aichi Biodiversity Targets, was missed by 2020; the source attributes that in part to “the dearth of reporting measures” (citing SCBD 2020, Xu et al. 2021). ⟨Inference: the one citable instance in this wiki of a global policy regime whose failure is attributed, at least partly, to a missing measurement layer. The hedge matters — “contributed to”, not “caused” — but SINE otherwise asserts this proposition without evidence.⟩
SEEA EA — System of Environmental-Economic Accounting, Ecosystem Accounting
Of the UN Statistical Division, applied by national statistical offices. Endorsed by the UN Statistical Commission as a global statistical reporting standard (United Nations 2024). Reporting indicators under development in 41 states (United Nations 2023). The sibling framework is the System of National Accounts — SEEA EA does for ecosystems what the SNA does for GDP.
Five accounts:
| Account | Reports |
|---|---|
| Ecosystem extent | total area covered by each ecosystem type over an accounting area |
| Ecosystem condition | quality of those ecosystem types in terms of their main characteristics |
| Ecosystem services (physical flow) | services supplied and used, in biophysical units |
| Ecosystem services (monetary flow) | the same, in monetary units |
| Monetary ecosystem asset | net present value of expected future flows of ecosystem services |
Plus thematic accounting — much more open and flexible in structure — which can host biodiversity accounts and species accounts that do not fit the five regular accounts.
It prescribes structure, not indicators. SEEA EA “only sets the structures and principles of reporting, including the main classes of indicators and how they should be selected and/or developed”, providing “a pathway for consistency while leaving clear zones of flexibility and responsibility to the States”. Each state can tailor indicators to its ecological characteristics and national priorities while retaining comparability through the shared structure.
Two constraints inherited from economic accounting, both of which matter:
- Exchange values only — “the values at which goods, services, labour or assets (…) could be exchanged for cash” (United Nations 2010). No relational or intrinsic values.
- “Supply” and “use” are two views of one number — the amount of the service actually appropriated, grouped by source ecosystem versus by user sector. Not supply-as-capacity. This collides head-on with the EESV vocabulary; see Essential variables.
SEEA EA is usable by Indigenous Peoples and local communities to contribute to national and MEA reporting, “if so desired”. Definitions and principles are scale-independent, so applicable in principle at any spatial scale.
The contrast between the two
| KM-GBF | SEEA EA | |
|---|---|---|
| Body | UN CBD | UN Statistical Division |
| Prescribes | indicators (42 headline + 177 others) | structure and principles |
| Reporting unit | party to the Convention, via NBSAPs/NRs | national statistical office |
| Value stance | conservation targets | exchange values, national-accounts compatible |
| Flexibility | low — comparability by fixed indicator | high — comparability by shared structure |
| Uptake | all parties | 41 states developing indicators |
⟨Inference: two regimes with opposite theories of how comparability is achieved, drawing on the same observations. That is the argument for an intermediate layer rather than a mapping table — a prescribed-indicator regime and a prescribed-structure regime cannot be reconciled downstream, only upstream at the data product. It is also the structural difference between PACT, which prescribes a method, and the ICC ledger candidate, which prescribes a unit of account.⟩
Other MEAs with reporting frameworks that could draw on the same layer, named by the source: the Convention on Migratory Species, CITES, the Ramsar Convention (wetlands), the SDGs, and the BBNJ / High Seas Treaty (named as a coming application case for KM-GBF Target 13 under Goal C). The IPBES assessment process is the third consumer alongside KM-GBF and SEEA EA.
The corporate and financial side
The source’s §1 states that MEAs and “efforts within the corporate sector
that focus on developing nature-related reporting frameworks” share the
same challenges, and names three. None has a primary source in
sources/ — each entry below is what Kim et al. say about it and nothing
more.
- TNFD — Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures. “Core disclosure metrics” (TNFD 2023). ⟨Background: TNFD is the nature-side counterpart to the TCFD, whose recommendations were absorbed into ISSB/CSRD; nothing about that pathway is sourced here.⟩
- Nature Positive Initiative (NPI) — draft “state of nature metrics” (NPI 2025). Draft stage.
- NGFS — Network for Greening the Financial System. Developing “a conceptual framework and a methodological guide for national and regional central banks to utilize scenario-based approaches to assessing and mitigating nature-related risks” (NGFS 2023, 2024).
The shared interest, stated:
While these financial institutions have slightly different focuses and needs, their common interest is in forecasting and reporting on financial risks stemming from biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation. This requires an improved understanding and use of biological, environmental, and socio-economic data, models, and indicators for rigorous and accurate assessments of the risks, as well as appropriate interventions for minimizing them.
And the paper’s conclusion returns to it as an objective rather than an achievement: “an improved interoperability of data and indicators used by the corporate and financial sector through the collaboration with biodiversity science and ecological economics communities will make key contributions to mitigating nature-related risks”.
⟨Inference: three observations worth carrying.
First, the shape is the one the wiki already knows from carbon — a disclosure regime arriving ahead of the data layer that would make its numbers believable. TNFD asks firms to disclose nature-related metrics; the measurement layer that would make those metrics comparable is, on the source’s own account, voluntary and pilot-stage. That is where carbon was before PACT.
Second, central banks entering on nature-related risk is the same structural move as BIS/IAIS naming data infrastructure as a systemic constraint on reinsurance pricing, recorded on the coffee context map. Two supervisory bodies, two substances, one bottleneck. If the insurance-first thesis holds for coffee, this is the generalisation of it.
⟨2026-10-14 — qualified by the first primary source from inside the industry. Sounding the Alarm describes a (re)insurance sector whose constraint is not only absent data but projections adjusted downward for commercial reasons, on top of a risk-model layer concentrated in “a small number of base case models” (→ the NatCat model layer). Supervisors naming a data bottleneck and firms shading the data they have are different problems with different remedies. The parallel drawn above survives — both are supervisory bodies identifying an information constraint — but “one bottleneck” is now the weaker half of the sentence, and the insurance-first thesis it generalises has itself been narrowed on the protection gap page.⟩
Third, the confidentiality constraint enters here and only here. The state-side regimes are states reporting to a convention — nothing to hide. The moment the reporting entity is a firm disclosing its nature-related dependencies and impacts, the bargaining half of the problem reappears, and with it the instrument set that the state-side literature never reaches for. The source does not notice this discontinuity; it treats the corporate frameworks as facing “similar” challenges. ⟨They are not similar in the respect that matters most to SINE.⟩ This is the sharpest unclaimed space the paper opens, and it is unverified — no TNFD or NGFS primary source has been read. Recorded as a hypothesis, not a finding.⟩
Open task: ingest a TNFD primary source (the core disclosure metrics) and the NGFS nature-related scenario framework, and test whether confidentiality is named as a constraint there. Until then the third inference above is unsupported. See open tasks.
Cross-references
- Essential variables — the proposed supply side, and the two crosswalks
- Kim et al. (2026) — the single source behind this page
- Product-level carbon regulation (CBAM, LCFS, CFMS) — the same page for carbon
- ESG reporting in the financial sector — EBA disclosure rules and the SME primary-data gap
- Coffee — Minimum Viable Context — BIS/IAIS on data infrastructure as a systemic constraint
- Stefan Dierks — the biodiversity/natural-capital brief inside a corporate sustainability function
- GEO BON
- Circular ecosystem maturity stages — ⟨2026-11-06⟩ this domain used as the stress test for a maturity ladder built from the circular-economy sources. It is the case that forces the split between demand for disclosure (TNFD/NPI/NGFS, present) and bookability (absent), and the case where the S2 rung is missing because nothing is being bargained over.
Sources
- Kim et al. (2026) —
sources/whitepapers/2026-09-24-kim-essential-variables-biodiversity-standardization.pdf(§1, §3.1, §3.2, §5.4, §6)