Natural Capital Protocol
Financial metrics alone cannot determine business performance or success.
Business needs to produce reliable, relevant and fit-for-purpose information that can inform business decision-making and ensure meaningful and credible disclosure on social and environmental metrics.
Through implementing the Natural Capital Protocol, we aim to scale up natural capital measurement, valuation and management by:
- Strengthening and simplifying communication
- Mainstreaming business approaches to measure and value natural capital
- Aligning on natural capital measurement and valuation through the Natural Capital Protocol and Toolkit
The Challenge
Business impacts and depends on natural capital to succeed, but humanity is depleting natural capital faster than the Earth can replenish it. To date, there is no agreed-upon approach for businesses to understand and compare these impacts and dependencies. This has to change.
For businesses to compete on sustainability performance - rather than methodology - we need broad business engagement, implementation of natural capital measurement and valuation. At the same time, sector specific guidance will be important to ensure relevance and applicability for all
The Business Case
For businesses to make better decisions– they need to be able to produce comparable information on natural capital.
We must work harder to measure, value and manage natural capital as carefully as we do financial capital. Natural capital measurement and valuation enables business to make a meaningful contribution to business, society and the environment.
More credible methodologies will lead to more meaningful information, and better decisions – both for business themselves, and investors.
The Business Solution
We support business in the implementation and uptake of approaches to measure, value and manage natural capital through a structured approach and purposeful communication.
Natural Capital Protocol and Toolkit
The Natural Capital Protocol offers a standardized framework for businesses to better identify, measure and value their impacts and dependencies on nature.
The Protocol helps inform business decision-making and presents the first step towards creating an agreed-upon approach.
The Natural Capital Protocol Toolkit sorts through the wealth of tools, methodologies and approaches available for natural capital measurement and valuation and maps them against the Natural Capital Protocol framework.
Additional guidance to the Natural Capital Protocol
We support and contribute to the development of sector and topic specific guidance. Currently under development with the Natural Capital Coalition that we are actively engaged in are:
- Forest Sector Guide led by WBCSD’s Forest Solutions Group
- Biodiversity supplement led by Cambridge Conservation Initiative
- Finance Sector Supplement led by the Natural Capital Finance Alliance (NCFA) (formerly the Natural Capital Declaration) and the Dutch Association of Investors for Sustainable Development (VBDO).
