Japanese businesses lead on TNFD reporting
Japanese businesses are demanding greater policy ambition from the country’s government on nature investment, as many move faster than their global peers on managing nature risk within their supply chains.
A November 2025 letter from the Nature Conservation Council of Keidanren, the leading Japanese business federation, urges the government to integrate nature restoration into its growth plans. Keidanren represents more than 1,300 of the country’s businesses including Toyota, Sony and Mitsubishi Electric, with 141 of the companies sitting on the nature council.
“The government should position the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and natural capital as a new growth sector,” and support companies to “ensure the sustainability of their operations”, the letter says.
Sam Sinclair, co-founder and director of biodiversity consultancy Biodiversify and who works with Japanese companies, tells Sustainable Views that businesses in Japan are more aware of nature degradation as a risk than most of their international peers. The country relies on imports for around 60 per cent of its food (compared with less than 20 per cent in the US) and faces significant food security challenges.
Sinclair says large Japanese food and beverage companies with whom he works are interested in “restoring nature directly for a business benefit” and are making progress at understanding nature dependency. These businesses include the multinational Japanese beverage company Suntory Group and trading concern Kanematsu, which has significant agrifood holdings.
Japan has the highest level of compliance with the Taskforce on Nature-Related Financial Disclosure, with 231 companies reporting compared with 96 in the UK, 39 in China and 22 in the US. Ogi Kanaya, director of the corporate network Business for Social Responsibility’s Tokyo office, tells Sustainable Views the majority of businesses doing TNFD reporting in the country are large companies.
Due to high levels of forest cover and large unpopulated mountain areas, Japan’s nature is in a relatively healthy state compared with other industrialised economies. However, urbanisation, pollution and climate change are putting the country’s biodiversity under pressure.
Emma Toovey, chief nature officer at UK biodiversity credit provider Environment Bank, tells Sustainable Views that many Japanese sustainability teams are already translating TNFD disclosure into “board-level conversations about nature-related risk and opportunity”.
Supply-chain risks
A spokesperson from Suntory tells Sustainable Views that its nature risk management is centred on water stewardship, as water is its “single most important ingredient”. The group has reported on the TNFD since 2023.
Since 2003 Suntory has developed 27 watershed conservation areas to protect its sourcing, covering 12,000 hectares across Japan. Routine pumping of groundwater in the country during the 20th century has left groundwater reserves and some towns and cities damaged by subsidence.
“Healthy soil is the foundation of groundwater recharge and biodiversity,” the Suntory spokesperson says. The company has also begun landscape restoration in areas where it sources other raw materials, including barley, grapes, coffee and blackcurrants.
Other Japanese businesses also told Sustainable Views that they were approaching their nature strategies from a risk perspective. Kanematsu sustainable business employee Tsubasa Tamura says avoiding “procurement risks” is the main driving force behind the company’s nature policy as “supply shortages and rising raw material costs could threaten the continuity of business operations”.
Meanwhile, Mika Nabeshima, chief sustainability officer at insurance company Tokio Marine, says the company has “enhanced” its portfolio analysis and engagement with sectors that have significant dependencies and impacts on natural capital.
Transition strategies policy
From a policy perspective, the Japanese government is aiming to be “nature positive” by 2030 under its national biodiversity strategy and action plan adopted in 2023, and to conserve at least 30 per cent of land and sea areas by 2030, as agreed under the 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
Under a programme of nationally certified, sustainably managed natural sites it has also begun certifying protected spaces, with 282 sites covering 54,500 hectares as of March 2026. Half of the sites certified under the scheme are owned by the private sector, including eight of Suntory’s “natural water sanctuaries”.
Businesses want more nature-related policies but it is not yet clear what that will look like
A spokesperson from the Japanese Ministry of the Environment tells Sustainable Views that it is considering implementing a voluntary “biodiversity credits” scheme based on conservation and restoration activities carried out under the NCSMNS programme.
Policymakers are also targeting private sector involvement in nature restoration through a “transition strategies towards nature-positive economy” policy, which encourages companies to integrate nature into their business strategy.
Meanwhile, large companies listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Prime Market will begin mandatory sustainability reporting using standards issued by the Sustainability Standards Board of Japan and aligned with the International Sustainability Standards Board from March 2027.
“Businesses want more nature-related policies but it is not yet clear what that will look like,” says Sinclair. The government is considering whether to pursue a domestic-focused approach or to task countries with meeting supply-chain requirements, building on their TNFD disclosures, he adds.
Tamura says he would like to see regulation from the Japanese government to reduce “soil degradation caused by chemical fertilisers, deforestation due to development, and land-use change”, while Nabeshima wants “consistent frameworks” for businesses on nature-related risks.
Engineering company Taisei Corporation released its Japan biodiversity metric in April, a privately developed standard intended to help businesses measure their biodiversity impacts.
UK BNG as food for thought
Japanese policymakers have been engaging with other jurisdictions to better understand their policy approach.
The Ministry of the Environment spokesperson says the UK’s biodiversity net gain policy is “being closely followed as an important international precedent, particularly with regard to biodiversity valuation metrics, market design and mechanisms for mobilising private finance towards nature restoration”.
However, the government is “not seeking to apply the UK model directly” as it wishes to develop an approach “better suited to Japan’s specific ecological, social and land-use contexts”, says the spokesperson.