--- title: what nature value at risk actually measures canonical_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/what-nature-value-at-risk-actually-measures markdown_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/what-nature-value-at-risk-actually-measures.md subtitle: "a share of one place, in a hard year, for one service" category: nature-finance --- # what nature value at risk actually measures *a share of one place, in a hard year, for one service* A mill, a cooling plant, and a factory can each be handed a percentage. A farm lender can be handed a hectare map. In September 2026, Lloyds Banking Group and Earth Blox published the percentage as **nature value at risk**: the share of economic value at one place that could be exposed if one natural service fails in a hard year. The place is older than the percentage. A southern pine stand grows the fibre. Snow on a Colorado mountain is stored water a cooling plant did not manufacture. Plants holding a slope keep soil out of a factory intake. A southern pine stand, a mountain snowpack, and the plants holding a slope exist whether or not anyone buys a certificate. Nature value at risk is a percentage a bank can read. Ensurance funds the living system. It is not the percentage. For the forest behind the fibre figure, that system is [Temperate Forests](/temperate-forests.ensurance?from=guide). :::johnson **the percentage follows the place.** It is one service, at one site or in one sourcing region, in a 1-in-20-year year. [Temperate Forests →](/temperate-forests.ensurance?from=guide) ::: ## what the percentage counts ### what is nature value at risk? **Nature value at risk** is the share of economic value that could be at risk if one natural resource or service degrades or drops out. The denominator depends on the case. It can be revenue at a site, the value of an asset, or production value in a sourcing region. Lloyds Banking Group and Earth Blox, in *The Missing Line Item*, set the scenario as a severe but plausible **1-in-20-year** year. They equate that year to a 5% annual probability. Each dependency is scored alone. A pest reading and a water reading are two passes through the same place. Adding them does not produce a combined nature value at risk. The scope is dependency risk, not transition, market, or geopolitical risk. The companies in the study supplied the financials, the operations, and the site locations. Earth Blox combined those inputs with geospatial data. The published figures are directional scenario estimates. The author is Lloyds Banking Group, with Earth Blox. Lloyd's of London is the insurance market. Lloyd's List is a shipping paper. Where the report cites the Lloyd's Tercentenary Research Foundation, that citation is a different institution. ### how is it different from a nature footprint? A nature footprint is an account of pressure: land an operation occupies, water it withdraws, habitat it changes. It describes what a company does to a place. Nature value at risk is a share of economic value that sits on one service if that service drops out in the scenario year. A site can show a modest footprint and a large percentage, because revenue depends on a stand, a snowpack, or a slope the company does not operate. The two ledgers answer different questions. Who depends on whom is a different question. [The missing object is the graph](/guide/the-missing-object-is-the-graph?from=guide) treats nature-related financial risk as that pathway. This page keeps the percentage. ### is nature value at risk a loss forecast? It is a directional scenario estimate. Lloyds and Earth Blox say the figures are not a forecast, not an expected loss, and not a measure of future financial performance. A committee can rank two sites with the share. The share stays a scenario. The percentage leaves the ordinary year unstated. It records exposure in a hard year. It does not state what the stand, the snowpack, or the slope produces when the service is simply arriving. ## three statistics, one label Three published uses of these words are already in circulation. Mixing them treats a country screen, a commercial product, and a site percentage as one number. | name | what the figure is | | --- | --- | | NGFS / Ranger, *Green Scorpion* (2023) | About 7–9% of global GDP from water-related risks, at a 5% value-at-risk, across five ecosystem services, called a lower bound. A screen for countries and sectors. | | NatureAlpha NVaR (September 2025, inside ICE) | A commercial product. It includes transition risk as well as dependency. | | Lloyds / Earth Blox (September 2026) | A percentage at one site or one sourcing region. Dependency risk only, in a 1-in-20-year scenario. | The 7–9% of GDP is the macro screen, not a finding of the September 2026 report. NatureAlpha includes transition risk, so it is a different product. The 2026 method draws on the earlier macro work. The 5% is the shared 1-in-20 return period. A 7–9% share of GDP and a one-service site or fibre-growth share do not share a unit, and they are not added or swapped. ## three places, one sentence each International Paper's fibre sourcing region for its southeastern containerboard mills shows pest and disease control at a mean of 13.3%, with sampled locations from 10.2% to 19.6%. The pest paragraph is expected annual fibre growth, and the chart label says "% of asset value". Use the paragraph. 19.6% is the high end of that fibre-growth sample, and not a share of the company. A large US technology-services company, unnamed in the report, uses water-based cooling that needs a continuous supply, and the water-supply share of revenue at the site is 13.1% in Boulder, Colorado and 8.8% in Columbus, Ohio. Three US manufacturing sites, company unnamed, show water supply at about 9% to 12% of annual revenue at the site, not of the parent. Those three percentages are separate cuts. They do not stack into one score for a company, a sector, or a country. ## how to read a single figure Read the denominator before the percentage. Expected annual fibre growth, revenue at a site, and asset value are different bases. Read one service. A chart with several dependencies is several scenario cuts. The usable sentence is pest and disease, in this sourcing region, in this kind of year. Keep the authors' limit on the figure. It is directional, it is one scenario, and the companies supplied the financials and the locations. Take Boulder as the pattern. 13.1% is a share of site revenue for water supply in the 1-in-20-year scenario. It is not a share of the parent company, and it is not a loss on a schedule. Columbus is the same sentence at 8.8%. The cooling type is the constant. The place moves the share. ## where each case goes Companion pages carry the cases. The fibre sample, on land the mill does not own, continues in [the fibre grows on land the mill does not own](/guide/the-fibre-grows-on-land-the-mill-does-not-own?from=guide). The two cooling sites continue in [the same cooling plant, two snowpacks](/guide/the-same-cooling-plant-two-snowpacks?from=guide). The hectare map, and the difference between mapped land and money paid, continues in [a hectare map is not a payment](/guide/a-hectare-map-is-not-a-payment?from=guide). The forest the fibre percentage points at is [Temperate Forests](/temperate-forests.ensurance?from=guide). ## sources [*The Missing Line Item*](https://25218570.fs1.hubspotusercontent-eu1.net/hubfs/25218570/Customer%20content/The%20Missing%20Line%20Item%20-%20Lloyds%20&%20Earth%20Blox.pdf) — Lloyds Banking Group and Earth Blox, September 2026. The definition, the 1-in-20 scenario, and the three US cases. [Earth Blox explainer](https://www.earthblox.io/resources/lloyds-and-earth-blox-quantify-nature-risk-for-corporates-in-new-report-the-missing-line-item) — 23 September 2026. [*The Green Scorpion*](https://www.ngfs.net/system/files/import/ngfs/medias/documents/ngfs_occasional_paper_green-scorpion_macrocriticality_nature_for_finance.pdf) — NGFS / Ranger, 2023. The 7–9% of global GDP figure. A different statistic. [NatureAlpha NVaR announcement](https://www.naturealpha.ai/insights/press-release-naturealpha-unveils-nature-value-at-risk-nvar-framework-to-enable-businesses-to-quantify-financial-exposure-to-nature-related-risks) — 17 September 2025. Commercial framework; includes transition risk. ## the series - [what nature value at risk actually measures](/guide/what-nature-value-at-risk-actually-measures?from=guide) - [the fibre grows on land the mill does not own](/guide/the-fibre-grows-on-land-the-mill-does-not-own?from=guide) - [the same cooling plant, two snowpacks](/guide/the-same-cooling-plant-two-snowpacks?from=guide) - [a hectare map is not a payment](/guide/a-hectare-map-is-not-a-payment?from=guide) - [fund the stand the percentage points at](/guide/fund-the-stand-the-percentage-points-at?from=guide)