Insights & News

Methods are data too: an SBTN case study

Companies are acting on nature, but slowly, and it isn’t for lack of trying. A 2026 McKinsey analysis found that 28% of Fortune Global 500 companies had targets across three or more nature dimensions, up from 16% in 2022.

Nature data is dense, place-based, and complex. Nature benefitted from the engagement that turned climate change into a boardroom concern. As corporate awareness of environmental issues has matured, the challenge with nature hasn’t been convincing the private sector that nature risk is worth addressing; it’s figuring out how to address nature loss at scale, with the urgency nature needs.

Nature data and methodologies are complex because nature is complex. Scientific methodologies and corporate implementation guidelines have different jobs, and they normally have different audiences. But in corporate nature, the science and the implementation guidance are evolving concurrently, so users are exposed to more of the underlying rationale than they normally would be. These rationales and explanations enhance the rigor of nature-related methodologies but can hamper their uptake when the corporate user needs clarity, brevity, and methodological stability. According to a 2026 OECD report, “the proliferation of standards and reporting frameworks also creates complexity, increasing transaction costs, uncertainty and the potential for duplication of efforts.” The complexity of nature data and the methodologies to address it have created an implementation challenge for companies.

Our first formal exposure to SBTN was on the validation team for the first land and freshwater pilot. Our role was to create the process that governed the extraction of the validation requirements from the SBTN methods, the first of their kind to support setting science-based targets across nature’s realms of land, freshwater, and eventually ocean. In the next land and freshwater pilot, we were on the other side, leading a multinational company through the methods, which had been updated since our first exposure.

So how do we separate the wheat from the chaff? Methodologies help us understand how to handle data, but methodologies themselves are data. Take the Science Based Targets Network (SBTN) as an example. SBTN is to the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) what the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) is to the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). Science-based targets for nature are a complementary part of a program that includes consideration of corporate pillars like governance, strategy, risk and impact management, and metrics and targets to measure progress.

By breaking down the documents into their parts via a qualitative content analysis, you can (1) streamline how a user navigates the methods, and (2) make it easier for enterprise programming to evolve as methodologies do. This is what led us to create this resource: The SBTN Steps 1 & 2 Process Map.

The SBTN Steps 1 & 2 Process Map visualizes which actions come from which version of the methods, and where in the methods updates have occurred. In the v1.1 SBTN Step 1 Assess methodology, there are 9 total tasks to complete all requirements. In the Step 1&2 Technical Guidance v1.2 update, 6 of those tasks receive supplemental guidance. In our graphic, the Step 1 v1.1 guidance and the v1.2 technical guidance update have been integrated into an overall flow, with the guidance version tagged next to each task.

Keeping relationships and transformations as part of the process flow ensures that we’re not just creating a diagram, but something usable that informs how data is handled as it passes through each step. The resulting structure of this analysis is decision-useful, methodologically faithful, and supports understanding and action. The idea is function and clarity: Can a decision-maker look at this diagram and understand what to do as they navigate each task? And does this process, when navigated faithfully, replicate the methodology?

The understanding this process creates can help make corporate nature programs evergreen as methodologies evolve. We know that these methods will change because the science is evolving, but removing some of the explanations necessary for the methods to be sufficiently science-aligned can help corporate users make these methods more fit for their needs. As the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) integrates nature via TNFD, as the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) evolves, and as SBTN releases updates to its suite of methodologies, we can breathe easier knowing that our approach helps users make targeted updates to their related programming where necessary. It supports users in seeing the big picture, the major actions, decision points, and goals, i.e., the “forest” as opposed to getting lost in the explanation, the edge cases, the “trees.”

We have made the SBTN Steps 1 & 2 Process Map navigable on the Kent Strategy website. We hope it will inspire you to approach other methodologies with the same perspective.

Have you applied this approach to other methodologies?

What have your biggest pain points been in understanding and acting on nature?

Let us know: