Project Update

Launch of GRI 101: Biodiversity 2024

on 25 January 2024, a major revision to the GRI Biodiversity was published. GRI 101: Biodiversity 2024 updates, expands, and replaces GRI 304: Biodiversity 2016.

The Standard, aligned with the goals and targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, will help organizations to better understand which decisions and business practices lead to biodiversity loss, where in their value chain impacts occur, and how they can be managed.

The importance of this standard

The alarming decline in biodiversity in the last decades threatens to bring disastrous consequences to the environment and people, including triggering knock-on effects on climate change.

The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) adopted the 'post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework' in 2022, which has defined collective commitments to reverse the loss of biodiversity for all relevant stakeholders, including government, companies, civil society, and investment institutions.

Both governments and companies are being called upon to demonstrate accountability in responding to the biodiversity crisis by conserving and sustainably using biodiversity. The revision of GRI 304: Biodiversity 2016 aims to reflect global best practice on biodiversity management to support companies in addressing their impacts.

Basis for conclusions

The Biodiversity Standard exposure draft was made available for public comment between 5 December 2022 and 28 February 2023. You can access 122 submissions from organizations and individuals here.

A re-exposure of the disclosure 304-7 Access and benefit-sharing for public comment took place between 26 July – 10 September 2023 and has now ended. The comments from 17 submissions from the re-exposure can be found here.

'Basis for conclusions for GRI 101: Biodiversity 2024' provides a summary of the public comments received. It also provides a summary of how the GSSB responded to these comments in the finalization of the Standard.

About this project 

The review of GRI 304: Biodiversity 2016 is a priority project for the GSSB. Since the GRI disclosures on biodiversity were last revised in 2006, the issue of biodiversity has received significant attention in the global sustainable development agenda.

This project aims to review GRI 304: Biodiversity 2016 to represent internationally agreed best practices and align with recent developments as well as relevant authoritative intergovernmental instruments in biodiversity.

The Standard will enable an organization to publicly disclose its most significant impacts on biodiversity and how it manages them. This disclosure enhances transparency on the organization's impacts and increases organizational accountability.

The GSSB appointed a multi-stakeholder Technical Committee in November 2021 to lead the revision of GRI 304: Biodiversity 2016. The project will follow the GSSB's Due Process Protocol, the implementation of which will be overseen by the Due Process Oversight Committee. Read the Project Proposal and the Terms of Reference for more information.