(Bloomberg) -- The UK government plans to spend an additional £2 million to promote a new financial reporting initiative to help businesses report the risks they face from biodiversity loss and ecosystem decline.

Richard Benyon, a minister in the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said the money would go toward improving marketing and capacity building for the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures, which unveiled its initial framework in September. The UK had previously committed to spend an initial £2.8 million; the £2 million top-up is set to be announced Saturday, according to Benyon. 

Shareholders, customers and boardrooms are “now looking at this as a key piece of risk analysis, because if you are not, there are so many business models that are a threat from collapsing ecosystems,” Benyon said in an interview at the COP28 climate conference in Dubai.

The UK has been a key backer of TNFD which follows the model of the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures. The UK was the first country in the Group of 20 to require public companies, banks and insurers with over 500 employees, as well as private companies with at least that headcount and revenue of £500 pounds ($688 million) to disclose climate-related financial information.

GSK Plc has already said it will voluntarily follow the TNFD recommendations for measuring nature-related risks and opportunities. However, at present there are no plans to make TNFD mandatory in the UK, Benyon said.

The European Union decided last month to criminalize wide-scale environmental damage, comparable to ecocide. Benyon said the UK was unlikely to take the same route.

Doing so could lead to a “feeding frenzy” for lawyers who would use the opportunity to take governments to court — particularly over their decision to continue using fossil fuels.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has been criticized for his decision to allow new licenses for oil and gas fields, despite promising to reach net zero.

“The more I look at it, the more worried I get,” said Benyon. “There’ll be a sort of arms race among politicians about who could define something as ecocide” even though different parts of the world would assess the situation differently.

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