Understand

Getting Started Guides: An Introduction

Whether you are developing your first strategy for sustainability or refining an existing one, our Getting Started Guides can help provide clarity on the work ahead. Getting Started Guides: An Introduction shares our overall approach and clarifies the value of setting a clear strategy anchored in your company’s most material issues. It also explains key concepts that underpin the work outlined within each guide, including building an understanding of system thresholds and process-based interim targets.

You can also find each of our issue-specific Getting Started Guides below.

Embedded Strategies for the Sustainability Transition

It is time for companies to take a very different approach to corporate strategy.

Our Embedded Strategies guide helps companies respond to the growing calls for businesses to articulate their purpose and their strategy in alignment with the need to shift the global economy towards the reduction of inequality, a rapid climate transition, the preservation of biodiversity, and the elimination of waste.

This guide will help you to develop a contextual strategy and goals that ensure your company is doing its part to maintain the resilience of key social and environmental systems.

Building on our Road to Context guide with insights from 300+ interviews with senior executives, CEOs, board chairs, and directors, as well as our experiences supporting companies around the world, it outlines resources and tactics that can help your company to scan for emerging issues and risks; understand their implications for your business; understand your impacts and your potential for positive influence; prioritise where it makes sense to direct your efforts; and set your strategy and goals in alignment with delivering systems value.

ENCORE (Exploring Natural Capital Opportunities, Risks, and Exposure)

ENCORE (Exploring Natural Capital Opportunities, Risks, and Exposure), a free tool from the Natural Capital Finance Alliance, can help you to visualise how your business may be exposed to accelerating environmental change. The tool provides a snapshot of the dependencies and impacts for a wide range of sub-industries and processes, and includes fact sheets and maps to help you understand the links between business activities and nature.

IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards

The IFRS Foundation is a not-for-profit responsible for developing global accounting and sustainability disclosure standards, known as the IFRS Standards. The International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) is an independent standard-setting body within the IFRS Foundation, and they have created a framework for the global business community to disclose material information on sustainability and exposure to climate-related risks and opportunities. This will help ensure that companies are providing consistent and comparable sustainability-related information alongside financial statements, in the same reporting package.

IFRS S1 provides a set of general reporting requirements for disclosing sustainability-related risks over the short, medium, and long term. IFRS S2 sets out specific climate-related disclosures, including the impact that climate change will have on an entity’s financial position, performance, cash flows, strategy, and business model. IFRS S2 is designed to be used with IFRS S1, and both of these standards fully incorporate the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD).

The Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures

Momentum is growing for organisations to formally and transparently articulate the risks that climate change poses to the value of their assets and their future profitability. The Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) emerged as a response to this call for action, empowering companies to more effectively measure and evaluate their own risks and those of their suppliers and competitors. The TCFD promoted “consistent, comparable, reliable, clear, and efficient” voluntary climate-related financial disclosures, and has developed comprehensive recommendations and resources in support of this. These resources focus on governance, strategy, risk, metrics, targets, and the use of scenario analysis for evaluating climate-related financial risks and opportunities.

The TCFD has produced a comprehensive Final Recommendations report and several supplemental reports, including a Technical supplement, which provides in-depth information and tools for using scenario analyses to understand the strategic implications of climate-related risks and opportunities to your organisation.

Although these resources remain to be an invaluable source of guidance, the Financial Stability Board (FSB) and IFRS have announced that the TCFD has fulfilled its remit and disbanded, and that monitoring of the progress of corporate climate-related disclosures now rests with the IFRS Foundation's ISSB.

The Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures

Reversing global nature loss depends on a shift in global financial flows away from nature-negative outcomes and toward nature-positive outcomes. This depends on large and small businesses across supply chains, financial institutions, and industries of all types collectively identifying, assessing, managing, and disclosing nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks, and opportunities. Towards meeting this inter-industrial challenge, the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) was established in 2021 in response to the growing need to factor nature into financial and business decisions.

The TNFD has developed a market-led, science-based risk management and disclosure framework for organisations to report and act on evolving nature-related risks and opportunities. The TNFD has also developed case studies and sector-specific guidance; a Knowledge Hub that features a curated collection of the latest external resources and market insights on nature-related risks and opportunities; and an open-access Learning Lab that supports self-paced learning about nature-related issues, the TNFD recommendations, and additional guidance.

The Task Force for Corporate Action Transparency (TCAT)

The Task Force for Corporate Action Transparency (TCAT) is a new initiative dedicated to strengthening the credibility of corporate climate action through transparent, verified, and third-party assurable accounting and reporting guidance. Until now, companies have been able to report numerical emissions data through frameworks like the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol or set reduction targets through initiatives like the Science Based Targets initiative. However, these frameworks lack standardised methods for companies to report the specific actions behind those reductions (e.g. transport companies replacing diesel trucks with electric vehicles, manufacturers capturing and storing carbon dioxide in underground reservoirs, etc). TCAT intends to develop, publish, and promote technical guidance and methodologies that help companies report emissions reduction and removal efforts transparently and clearly, and address gaps in financial and GHG accounting, reporting, and assurance by developing and aligning with best-in-class standards and practices

TCAT has launched two comprehensive GHG reporting frameworks. Developed through a collaboration among environmental groups, accounting experts, NGOs, business practitioners, and civil society members, the guides are designed to help companies explain exactly how they are lowering their emissions in real time, and in a way that is comparable across industries and verifiable by third parties. These guides are designed to fill an important gap in how companies measure, report on, and verify their corporate climate actions.

The first framework is Mitigation Action Accounting and Reporting Guidance (MAARG), which equips companies with tools to account transparently for the full spectrum of ton-denominated climate actions. Its multi-statement approach enables companies to report on climate actions without conflating different types of activities; MAARG’s framework allows each action to be clearly categorised and measured. Rather than consolidating all GHG-related activities into a single statement, which can obscure the distinction between actual emission reductions and accounting-only or business changes, MAARG introduces a five-statement reporting framework which supports both inventory and impact accounting: physical inventory statement, contractual inventory statement, inventory impact mitigation statement, sector impact mitigation statement, and global impact mitigation statement.

TCAT’s second new framework is the , which provides structured guidance for setting voluntary climate targets, tracking progress, and communicating results. This standardised approach enables stakeholders to assess the credibility and ambition of corporate climate targets and evaluate actual performance against commitments. In the absence of a unified framework in the voluntary reporting space, TARG fills a critical gap by offering clear and consistent methods for companies to disclose climate targets and report progress in a transparent and assurable manner. The framework is built around five core reporting elements: a target commitment report, base year emissions report, mitigation action report, target accounting report, and target attainment report.

5 Steps to a Corporate Strategy That Delivers on Sustainability

To achieve the societal transformation we need, companies must do their part to embed sustainability into their core strategy. That means focusing on more than shareholder value or even stakeholder value… it means focusing on systems value. We've created a straight-forward five-step process to help companies develop a truly embedded strategy.

Defining True Sustainability

In this brief article, Cory Searcy suggests that companies must change how they view sustainability if they want to determine whether or not they are sustainable. He explains how most companies currently focus on reducing environmentally destructive or unethical behavior, and how they must instead assess their performance relative to thresholds linked to the economic, environmental, and social resources on which they rely. This is a great, quick read that will help you articulate the need for moving beyond the 'triple bottom line' and towards a context-based 'embedded view'.

Scenario Planning for Climate Change: A Guide for Strategists

This book from Nardia Haigh takes a deep dive into climate change-related scenario planning and provides a framework that can help decision-makers develop a climate change strategy. The book builds on a range of rigorously tested scenario planning frameworks and provides a practical, four-step method for developing a scenario planning project. It also includes summaries of common climate change trends.

Her website also offers complementary videos, climate driver summaries, a sample scenario planning project proposal, and various worksheets to help you get started.

Strategic Foresight Primer

This introductory guide on strategic foresight is a good, accessible primer for board members, executives, and other business leaders who want to grow their understanding of and capacity for long-term scanning and planning. It explains what foresight is, what it is not, and what it can achieve. It also provides an overview of some of the most common methods and tools for effective strategic foresight.

Foresight Training Modules

These Foresight Training Modules were created by Policy Horizons Canada to help users build a better understanding of foresight-related methodologies. The modules cover topics such as scanning, assumptions, and systems mapping, and they feature summaries, exercises, tip sheets, and even presentation and facilitation notes to support change agents in teaching this material to peers and leaders.

Although policymakers in government were the target audience for these modules, the content is equally applicable to educators and decision-makers in business.

Equitable Futures Toolkit

This toolkit aims to help you imagine a more equitable future through two different interactive approaches: through Institute For The Future (IFTF) Foresight Training and the Equitable Futures Card Game. These modular workshops would especially benefit sustainability practitioners who want to facilitate sessions with senior leaders. The tools included provide a novel way of helping participants to understand the factors impacting your business; to create meaningful social narratives that can guide strategy; to build awareness of the positive and negative consequences that your business has on the world around it; to develop an understanding of challenges to overcome and the values and tools needed to build a more equitable future; and more.

The Futures Toolkit: Tools for Futures Thinking and Foresight Across UK Government

This toolkit was created by the UK's Government Office for Science to help acquaint policymakers and government officials with foresight and futures thinking and to help with the creation of scenarios. We specifically recommend pages 26-76, which highlight a broad range of tools that can help you to gather intelligence about the future; explore the dynamics of change; describe potential futures; and develop and test policies and strategy.

Sustainable Development Goals Interactive Tool

IISD has developed a free interactive tool that directs users to SDG-related publications by region or goal. This tool provides insight into how the SDGs impact companies and communities around the world, and may be of particular use for companies with an international scope or those interested in entering new markets.

CISL’s Business Transformation Framework: Preliminary Diagnostic

This tool from the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) can help you better understand how purpose-driven your business is. The Business Transformation Framework groups businesses into progressive categories: short-term self-interest; long-term self-interest (developing); long-term self-interest (mature); and purpose-driven. The self-reflective diagnostic tool can help you place your business along this continuum, as per an assessment indicators that includes organisational values, senior leadership, and financial management. This resource will be most useful to business leaders, change managers, and sustainability professionals seeking to drive business transformation.

The Ceres Roadmap 360º

This assessment tool from Ceres was designed to help small- and medium-sized companies assess and improve their sustainability performance. The tool features free, user-friendly, self-guided learning modules on management, engagement, and sustainability issues; additional modules can be unlocked with a premium account. The tool also produces customised reports that include a scorecard, best practice recommendations, and useful resources that can help you to embed sustainability into your strategic planning processes, governance systems, and decision-making.

Global Leadership in the Age of Turbulence

This report can help you understand the leadership challenge of our time—that is, the scale and complexity of “preserving human civilization." The report summarises the main insights from the 2024 Global Leadership Summit, including discussions of major trends related to geopolitics, innovation, governance, and economics. It then provides recommendations for leaders to enable a societal transition, which include accelerating innovation and the deployment of proven technologies; advocating for a new economic system that prioritises the social and environmental foundations that society is built on; and engaging citizens by repairing trust in political and corporate-level decision-making. These insights encourage a wider view of context and a longer view of history, which will be especially useful to business leaders.

The Global Regulations Radar: Bi-Annual Update on ESG and EHS Regulations

This bi-annual radar tool from the ERM Sustainability Institute can help you stay up-to-date on the sustainability regulations landscape. The radar provides an overview of ESG and EHS regulation in Europe, North America, and the Asia-Pacific region. It includes new regulatory developments and upcoming changes in each region and features an ESG and EHS regulations matrix, which lists the regulations that are expected to have the greatest impacts on companies with global operations. For each regulation, the matrix provides the rule highlights, scope, business context, timeline, and applicability. This tool will be most useful to your sustainability, legal, and compliance teams.

A Review of the Link Between Sustainability Performance and Company Valuation

This brief from WBCSD can help you to understand how capital markets are starting to reflect sustainability performance in company valuations; the benefits of strong, credible sustainability performance; and the risks of delaying action. It provides insights into the short-term and long-term impacts - including benefits and potential costs - of sustainability initiatives; the risks of the "do-nothing" option; evidence of how sustainability performance influences company valuation and financing conditions; and practical guidance for integrating sustainability into financial and strategy decision-making. The report explains that although initial costs will be required (and will need to be justified), financial markets increasingly reward robust environmentally sustainable practices with higher valuations, lower capital costs, and more investment. It also notes that, overall, more recent studies and surveys suggest that sustainable business strategies enhance corporate resilience and open new financial opportunities.

Climate Action Planner

The SME Climate Hub has created this resource to help small- and medium-sized businesses take practical steps to reduce both their emissions profile and costs. It features a concise self-assessment; provides recommendations based on your sector, goals, and key emissions areas; provides strategies that can be compared for best fit; and provides a custom-made action plan, drawing on a database of more than 750 actions.

The Social Foundation: 'A Safe and Just Place for Humanity'

Kate Raworth's “Doughnut” model is a key framework for understanding sustainability context. Building on the planetary boundaries framework as a 'ceiling', it adds social foundations as a 'floor' and underlines the need to operate in the space between. The social foundation is made up of 11 boundaries that draw attention to communities needing access to basic resources to fulfill their human needs. This access needs to be achieved in a way that does not place undue stress on the earth's resources. The framework is based on the premise that we should be striving to build and maintain social foundations while staying within planetary boundaries.

Liberating Structures

There are five conventional structures that guide the way we organise routine interactions and how groups work together: presentations, managed discussions, open discussions, status reports, and brainstorm sessions. These structures, however, can stifle inclusion and engagement, and are often too inhibiting or too loose and disorganised. To complement these more conventional options and improve shared knowledge and engagement, Liberating Structures introduces a menu of 33 innovative methods. Each method includes expected outcomes, step-by-step instructions, "tips and traps," examples, and more.