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TEEBAgriFood Operational Guidelines for Business

Developed to support businesses in implementing the TEEBAgriFood Evaluation Framework, the TEEBAgrifood Operational Guidelines for Business provide a practical way for businesses to understand and act upon their impacts and dependencies on natural, human, social, and produced capital. These Guidelines enable the agrifood sector to build resilience, mainstream best practice, protect biodiversity and contribute to a more sustainable food system.

The Guidelines reference and build on the internationally accepted harmonized business frameworks for identifying, measuring, and valuing organizational relationships with nature and people: the Natural and Social & Human Capital Protocols. The Protocols provide additional support and context when applying these Guidelines.

Building on the Food and Beverage Sector Guide, launched to accompany the Natural Capital Protocol, the Guidelines explore, for the first time, the connections within the sector with social and human capital and the finance sector.

Going beyond existing guidance, the Guidelines support businesses in understanding the interdependencies between nature and people in the value chain. This multi-capital approach marks an important step towards businesses implementing the capitals approach and integrating the value of all capitals into decision-making processes. Using outcomes of the TEEB AgriFood pilot applications, the Coalition will further explore the journey from multi-capital assessments to more integrated thinking in the development of the Capitals Protocol.

The launch of the Guidelines is accompanied by the launch of a Primer. This is a short introduction to the Guidelines and outlines how to apply them, and how the application of a multi-capital approach will improve your decision making processes.

Published alongside the Guidelines, the user template provides a clear checklist of each stage to be used by businesses applying a capitals assessment. By answering the questions and fulfilling the outcomes of each step, businesses can easily document, analyze and interpret their results.

The Guidelines:

  • Provide context on why the four capitals are relevant to any business in the food system and how businesses benefit from the value they receive from the capitals. 
  • Develop the business case for considering multiple capitals in the food sector. 
  • Identify impacts and dependencies on different capitals relevant to businesses across the value chain of the food sector. 
  • Provide practical examples to demonstrate sector-specific business applications of the capitals approach. 
  • Reveal information about the capitals a business relies upon and impacts upon. This information serves to supplement decision-making processes rather than replace them.
  • Can offer a way of understanding the true costs of impacts within the supply chain, supporting businesses in their efforts to conduct True Cost Accounting.

The Guidelines are specifically written for businesses in the agrifood sector but the multi-capital approach can be used by businesses in other sectors.

Translations of the Guidelines are available to download below in Bahasa, Mandarin, Portuguese, Spanish and Thai.

Download the Primer to the Guidelines here.

Download the Guidelines here.

Download the User Template here.

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