Building Your Nature Intelligence

From talking to doing.

That was the clear shift underpinning Building Your Nature Intelligence: Applying the TNFD in the Built Environment, co-hosted by BWD Strategic and Value Australia at the University of Technology Sydney - the first event co-hosted by Value Australia as part of Climate Action Week Sydney.

Bringing together participants from across infrastructure, property, planning, finance and development, the session explored what nature-related governance and risk assessment can look like in practice within the built environment sector.

Led and facilitated by Josue Castro from BWD Strategic, the session bridged theory and practice in real time - with participants moving directly from expert discussion into hands-on LEAP assessments across real-world built environment scenarios.

Perspectives from Elham Monavari (Green Building Council of Australia), Siobhan Toohill (Landcom) and Carolin Leeshaa (The Landbanking Group) helped frame the discussion, before the room quickly shifted from listening to actively working through the challenges together.

Working through simplified LEAP assessments, a practical process used to identify and assess nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks and opportunities, participants collaborated across case studies including data centres, logistics infrastructure, residential developments, large-scale wind energy and mixed-use urban precincts.

What quickly became clear was that nature-related governance is no longer confined to environmental reporting teams. Increasingly, these questions are intersecting with mainstream decisions around infrastructure resilience, operational continuity, investment risk, planning and asset performance.

Importantly, the workshop also demonstrated that this work does not need to sit solely with sustainability specialists, legal teams or technical advisors. Participants with little or no prior experience in the built environment sector were still able to actively engage with the process, contribute meaningfully to discussions and work through practical assessment challenges together.

That accessibility mattered. At times, the room felt less like a traditional workshop and more like an active strategy session - filled with excited chatter, collaborative problem-solving and, importantly, plenty of laughter. While discussions around nature and climate can often become dominated by the scale of the challenges ahead, what surfaced far more often throughout the afternoon were the opportunities: new ways of thinking about resilience, investment, infrastructure and long-term value creation.

The collaborative nature of the session also reinforced that nature-related decision-making cannot remain siloed within sustainability or compliance teams alone. Participants from well beyond the built environment sector were able to engage meaningfully with the process, highlighting the value of broader organisational literacy and participation in these conversations.

Importantly, the workshop challenged the perception that organisations must wait for perfect data, exhaustive regulatory guidance or large consulting teams before beginning. Using publicly available datasets and practical assessment frameworks, participants worked through how ecological dependencies and impacts can already be translated into operational and financial considerations today.

Several insights consistently surfaced throughout the afternoon:

1. Nature-related risks within the built environment carry real financial implications.
2. Practical frameworks and methodologies already exist.
3. Publicly available nature data is rapidly improving.
4. Organisations do not need perfection to begin - they need capability, literacy and a willingness to engage.

Throughout the workshop, the idea that “nature belongs on the balance sheet” repeatedly surfaced - not as a theoretical concept, but as an increasingly practical consideration shaping governance, investment and long-term resilience across the built environment sector.