28 November 2018, Cambridge Massachusetts, Geneva, Paris: Today marks the official transfer of the Natural Capital Protocol Toolkit (NCT) to the SHIFT.tools platform, hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management Sustainability Initiative (MIT Sloan SI).
This is a symbolic milestone on the bigger sustainability journey towards convergence, consistency and, ultimately, comparability of results when it comes to measuring and managing natural capital.
The Natural Capital Protocol Toolkit was designed to assist businesses in finding the right tools to measure and value natural capital and apply the Natural Capital Protocol. SHIFT.tools is an online collaborative platform that allows users to navigate a broad array of sustainability resources as well as curate, rate and review tools based on their own experiences.
With the addition of the tools from the Natural Capital Protocol Toolkit, the aim is to help SHIFT become a “TripAdvisor™” for tools that identify, measure and value natural capital impacts and dependencies. The goal is to highlight the most practical, valuable and generally-accepted corporate impact assessment methods.
“This collaboration is a bold step towards driving convergence of measurement and valuation tools. By transferring the Natural Capital Protocol Toolkit to, and joining forces with, MIT and the SHIFT.tools platform, we’re also hoping to reduce confusion and competition between similar online platforms. I encourage other organizations, resource and toolkit platforms to consider joining in,” said Eva Zabey, Director of Redefining Value at WBCSD.
“Harmonizing information, platforms and tools is essential to accelerate natural capital thinking. The integration of the Natural Capital Protocol Toolkit into the SHIFT.tools platform is therefore an obvious and exciting step for us to take to ensure that we are simplifying the landscape and supporting organizations as they seek to make better decisions by understanding their relationships with nature,” said Mark Gough, Executive Director of the Natural Capital Coalition.
“The urgency for action on climate change and the UN Sustainable Development Goals means that we don’t have time for reinventing the wheel. SHIFT.tools is an attempt to accelerate business efforts on sustainability by connecting people with information, frameworks, and tools that help them move their organizations forward. Bringing the Natural Capital Protocol Toolkit onboard is a significant expansion of the platform’s content and capabilities, and we are fortunate to be working with WBCSD and the Natural Capital Coalition, leading organizations in the sustainability field,” said Jason Jay, Senior Lecturer and Director of the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative.
A growing number of case studies on natural capital provide evidence to show that companies are increasingly trying to better manage their impact and dependencies on natural capital. The Natural Capital Toolkit serves as an interactive database of tools that help companies implement the Natural Capital Protocol. The toolkit is regularly updated to reflect new and updated tools as available and allows users to search the tools that are applicable to them.
With this transfer, the toolkit will no longer be available on the Natural Capital Toolkit website and users will be redirected to the SHIFT.tools platform.
