GRI 101: Biodiversity 2024, the New Biodiversity Disclosure Standard for Business

Human activities have altered the planet in many ways. Economic activities, in particular, have been highlighted for their impacts on the environment, including their contribution to biodiversity and ecosystem loss. Therefore, regulations are needed to ensure a responsible business operation. In this light, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) released GRI 101: Biodiversity 2024, an updated biodiversity disclosure standard for businesses worldwide.

Business & Biodiversity

Human populations benefit from biodiversity to fulfill our needs. Many things we use daily are derived from plants and animals, including food, medicine, clothes, and furniture. However, the increasing population and growing demands for products and services have contributed to the overexploitation of biodiversity.

The call to halt biodiversity loss is getting louder, and every stakeholder from all levels of society must participate. Regulations have emerged to monitor and evaluate businesses’ impacts on biodiversity. In 2016, the Global Reporting Initiative launched the GRI 304: Biodiversity 2016, providing a set of standards for companies to report their economic, social, and environmental impacts on biodiversity. In 2024, the organization released the GRI 101: Biodiversity 2024 as an updated version of the biodiversity standard disclosure.

GRI 101: Biodiversity 2024

The GRI 101: Biodiversity 2024 was developed by a technical committee involving multi-stakeholder experts and practitioners from civil society, institutions, business, and labor. The standard aims to enable organizations to publicly disclose their most significant impacts on biodiversity and how they manage them, thus supporting their sustainability reporting and corporate accountability.

The new standard builds on the global key frameworks on biodiversity, including the UN Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which aims for biodiversity to be valued, conserved, restored, and wisely used. There are several notable changes in the GRI 101: Biodiversity 2024, some of them are:

Facilitating full impact reporting across the supply chain, where the impacts on biodiversity can go under-reported.
Emphasizing location-specific reporting on impacts, including countries and jurisdictions, with detailed information on the place and size of operational sites.
Introducing new disclosures on the direct drivers of biodiversity loss, including land use, climate change, overexploitation, pollution, and invasive species.
Adding new requirements for reporting impacts on society. This includes impacts on local communities and Indigenous Peoples, as well as how businesses engage stakeholders in the ecosystem restoration process.

Improving Accountability on Biodiversity

Businesses have an important role in shaping their operations to be more responsible and sustainable. Over the next two years, the GRI 101: Biodiversity 2024 standard will undergo a pilot period with early adopters before being formally implemented on January 1, 2026. The new standard will hopefully serve as a tool for improving business accountability on biodiversity.

“The updated GRI Standard sets a new bar for transparency on biodiversity impacts. It will support detailed, location-specific reporting, both within an organization’s operations and throughout its supply chain, ensuring stakeholders can assess how impacts on biodiversity are mitigated and reduced. Identifying and managing an organization’s most significant impacts is critical to understanding dependencies and risks,” said Carol Adams, Chair of the GRI Global Sustainability Standards Board (GSSB).

Editor: Nazalea Kusuma

Kresentia Madina

Reporter at Green Network Asia | Website | + posts

Madina is the Assistant Manager of Stakeholder Engagement at Green Network Asia. She holds a bachelor’s degree in English Studies from Universitas Indonesia. As part of the GNA In-House Team, she supports the organization's multi-stakeholder engagement across international organizations, governments, businesses, civil society, and grassroots communities through digital publications, events, capacity building, and research.