- APRIL has published its first annual assessment aligned with the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD).
- The assessment applies a globally recognised framework to better understand nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks and opportunities.
- The voluntary process helps drive how APRIL embeds nature’s considerations into business strategy and decision-making.
- APRIL continues to implement measures to reduce use of natural capital and manage operational impacts on nature.
APRIL has published its first annual assessment aligned with the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) The assessment provides a structured evaluation of APRIL’s nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks and opportunities across its operations and fibre supply sources.
The assessment supports APRIL’s ongoing efforts to integrate nature-related factors into business decision-making and long-term planning. As a forestry company, nature is a primary resource and a key determinant of business resilience. Understanding how APRIL’s operations interact with ecosystems, and the risks and opportunities that arise from those interactions, informs how the company manages its business today and builds a resilient business for the future.
This builds on more than a decade of sustainability commitments and landscape stewardship initiatives, now brought together under the APRIL2030 sustainability agenda. APRIL’s Production-Protection approach, Sustainability policies, 1-for-1 commitment, US$1-per-tonne conservation funding mechanism and support for Restorasi Ekosistem Riau (RER) all reflect our longstanding efforts to protect, manage and restore natural ecosystems.
As a global, market-led initiative, TNFD provides a voluntary framework for organisations to assess, report and act on their nature-related risks, opportunities, dependencies and impacts. As of November, last year, more than 700 businesses and financial institutions in 56 countries had committed to commencing TNFD-aligned disclosures.
The TNFD assessment is part of APRIL’s broader approach to integrating nature into business decision-making. APRIL work alongside a range of scientific and conservation organisations, including Fauna & Flora International, and draw on guidance and expertise from organisations such as the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to help ensure its approach remains science based.
APRIL’s Thriving Nature Strategy, launched in 2025, sets four objectives: conserving and restoring critical ecosystems, protecting and restoring endangered species; strengthening data-driven ecosystem management and monitoring; and sharing conservation knowledge.
The TNFD process helps APRIL measure and assess the nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks and opportunities that inform delivery of its Thriving Nature and other sustainability objectives.
To execute the assessment, APRIL used TNFD’s recommended LEAP approach to identify and assess nature-related factors, incorporating:
- Locate — using spatial data to identify where APRIL’s operations and value chain interact with sensitive ecosystems.
- Evaluate — assessing dependencies and impacts on nature.
- Assess — identifying the material risks and opportunities that result.
- Prepare — responding to and reporting on the risks and opportunities.
The assessment draws on TNFD recommended analytical tools, including Exploring Natural Capital Opportunities, Risks and Exposure (ENCORE), the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Biodiversity Risk Filter and the WWF Water Risk Filter. It also incorporates TNFD’s sectoral guidance for forestry, pulp, and paper.
Assessment Findings
Findings of the assessment, which is aligned with 12 of the 14 TNFD-recommended disclosures, included:
- All 87 of the 87 material sites APRIL identified spanning forestry to manufacturing, intersect with ecologically sensitive areas, meaning they had high biodiversity and ecosystem integrity. High physical risks such as flooding were identified in 81 sites.
- Using the Integrated Biodiversity Assessment Tool Species Threats Abatement and Restoration (IBAT STAR), which assesses potential species extinction risk, risks across the majority of APRIL’s operational sites were found to be low at an aggregated level. Only one site was assessed as medium risk.
- ENCORE, which provides a high-level assessment of how businesses depend on ecosystem services, showed that APRIL’s business is highly dependent on ecosystem services such as biomass provisioning, soil quality regulation, water purification and rainfall patterns.
- As is typical for the forestry sector, the same analysis identified land-use change, pollution and resource use as our most significant potential impact drivers.
- Material risks identified by the assessment included flooding, wildfire, biodiversity loss, regulatory changes and increasing competition for fibre, all of which could affect operational resilience.
- Several opportunities were identified such as improving efficiency in water and resource use; strengthening access to nature-related financing; supporting ecosystem restoration and building stronger relationships with local communities and other stakeholders.
The full findings are available in the report.
What APRIL will do with the findings
APRIL will respond to the assessment’s findings by building on its longstanding commitments to nature-positive operations and landscape-level initiatives, organised using the Science Based Targets Network’s AR3T framework: Avoid, Reduce, Restore & Regenerate, and Transform.
APRIL’s primary approach is to protect natural ecosystems. The company is committed to no development in High Conservation Value and High Carbon Stock forests, a commitment that applies across its concessions, long-term supply partners, and open-market suppliers.
APRIL manages over 470,000 hectares of conservation and invests heavily in protection and restoration. This investment is directly tied to business productivity through the US$1 per tonne mechanism, whereby for every tonne of plantation wood delivered to our mill, a dollar is allocated to a conservation fund. These allocations have amounted to US$75 million for conservation since 2020, with US$14.8 million added in 2025 alone.
Where impacts do occur, APRIL works to reduce its footprints, resource use and operational impacts on nature. The company continues to make progress towards net-zero emissions from land use, with emissions reduced by 38% to 3.0 MtCO2e last year, from 4.8 MtCO2e in the 2019 baseline year.
APRIL also has had a strict no-burn policy in its operations for decades, and its integrated Fire Free Village Programme (FFVP), has helped keep fire levels consistently low, with fire incidents in participating areas around its concessions down 90% compared with pre-programme levels.
APRIL will continue to conduct assessments using the TNFD framework in coming years as its understanding of nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks and opportunities develops and will ensure disclosures evolve with it.
