eftec have been part of the technical author team of the Natural Capital Protocol, and work on natural capital for businesses, governments and civil society, at local, national and international levels. eftec are offering a 2-day training course that will provide an overview of the Protocol, with an emphasis on its materiality assessment, measurement and valuation steps. This training is designed for business personnel looking to apply and commission natural capital assessments within their business.

eftec provides economic analysis for sound, effective and sustainable environmental management. Since 1992, we have been assisting our public, private and non-governmental clients to:

• Understand the value of the natural environment: By using economic valuation techniques for primary research, and interpreting already existing evidence using value transfer.
• Demonstrate the value of the natural environment: By applying decision-support tools like cost benefit and cost effectiveness analyses, stakeholder engagement, multi-criteria analysis.
• Capture the value of the natural environment: By designing policies and investment strategies that involve offsets, habitat banking, green taxes and voluntary agreements to sustainably generate income and reduce environmental damage.

Many businesses across the world are reliant on increasingly scarce natural resources within their value chains.  As a result, including environmental (i.e. natural capital) impacts and dependencies in decision making is critical to ongoing business success.  ERM has been involved in collaborative efforts to develop tools and frameworks for measuring and valuing natural capital impacts, including being part of the consortium that developed the Natural Capital Protocol. Our global reach and vast experience can help companies on all of the business applications and apply valuations to those corporate value chain components highlighted in the Protocol. For example:

• We work with clients in over 120 countries to address biodiversity and ecosystem services-related projects .
• We work with clients to develop strategic approaches to a lower carbon.  Our unique combination of specialists are working together to address a broad array of technical and non-technical risks in climate resilience, air quality, energy efficiency,  carbon management and climate finance
• We support effective planning and execution of capital projects to manage the impacts on local stakeholders and environmental and cultural resources
• We develop and implement integrated tiered approaches to assessing and managing our client’s global and local exposure to water risks across all of their assets.
• We build customized decision support tools that have helped Fortune 500 companies and others value, monetize and prioritize natural capital impacts for land management,  capital budgeting,  environmental liability management.

The EU Business and Biodiversity (B@B) platform is an initiative by the European Commission to facilitate a greater engagement of private businesses to address the impact and dependencies of business on nature by accounting for the ecosystem services a business depends upon to operate and for the cost of direct and indirect impacts on the environment.

The platform shall work with business to further develop approaches such as guidelines, methodologies or tools (e.g. indicators or ecosystem-based approaches) that will promote the integration of biodiversity considerations into Business practice. In particular identifying, quantifying and/or valuing dependencies and impacts to inform business decision-making and reporting. The platform work shall support businesses in making better informed decisions — i.e. in terms of reducing business and ecological risks, higher efficiency using natural resources or ecosystem services.

Building on existing initiatives, the dedicated work stream Natural Capital Accounting of the platform has been considering methodologies establishing good practice principles in natural capital accounting in the private sector, with a particular focus on biodiversity and ecosystems. Key deliverables developed by the EL) Business and Biodiversity Platform so far include a business guide on how to select among 11 of the leading approaches on corporate Natural Capital Accounting (NCA). This is complemented by an overview comparing Natural Capital Accounting approaches.

Taking this work forward will require to develop closer synergies with the wider EL) and international work on natural capital accounting such as the Natural Capital Coalition.

The European Investment Bank (EIB) applies stringent environmental and social standards, including on the protection of biodiversity and ecosystems, in the operations it finances, and requires all its projects promoters to comply with them.  The EIB also includes, wherever quantifiable, environmental externalities, in its economic appraisal of projects.  The Bank is also looking into the development of different accounting approaches based on credible methodologies, metrics and data sets with regard to natural capital aspects.  Attention is requires in order to integrate a consistent approach across the Bank’s portfolio, as well as to strengthen innovative financing instruments such as the Natural Capital Financing Facility.

By joining the Natural Capital Coalition (NCC), the EIB would like to contribute and be part of this community of practice with respect to protecting and valuing biodiversity and ecosystems.  It is in our interest to promote increased coherence on metrics, accounting approaches as well as data sources used for valuation in order to systematically integrate their application in different sectors. In this context, the EIB will actively contribute to the annual NCC Collaboration Day. For example, the Bank would like to bring together practitioners and experts to discuss how to best integrate valuation of biodiversity aspects and ecosystem services into environmental-economic accounting and decision-making.

Little Blue Research, Ltd. is a company formed by Dr. Stephanie Hime, formally KPMG UK’s lead on Natural Capital and involved in the development of the Protocol, that specializes in supporting companies to understand their environmental and social impacts. We provide support in a number of areas relating to Natural Capital, Ecosystems Services, Social Impact and Commercial Research including:

• Environmental economics support: project scoping, impact and dependency mapping, data and gap analysis, and valuation.
• Social impact support on: understanding and monitoring the impact of different interventions and investments, developing social impact maps, prioritizing and valuing social impacts, designing and reviewing monitoring frameworks.
• General research and sustainability support on: stakeholder engagement, qualitative and quantitative research, valuing initiatives and developing sustainability strategies, conducting risk and opportunity analysis, benchmarking, designing and providing training.

Current clients: Natural Capital Coalition, Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, Confidential Utilities Provider.

Metabolic’s mission is to drive systems change within the global economy, focusing specifically on six key transitions: Cities and Regions, Food and Land-Use, Products & Services, Finance, Governance, and Mindset. Our work is underpinned by systems thinking and science-based target setting methodologies – an area that we see further scope for collaboration with the Capitals Coalition. Building on our discussions between the Capitals Coalition and Metabolic teams thus far, we see the following mutual benefits to be gained from joining the Coalition’s collaborative network:

– Potential to identify and scope collaborative projects to work on i.e. further work on linking SBTs and capitals thinking.
– Working on collaborative projects with organizations wanting to embark on a capital journey.

Metabolic’s material assessments/ impact footprint assessments form a good baseline with which to work with other organizations on the capitals’ valuation side. 

– Sharing knowledge and case studies relating to on-the-ground work and pilots. 
– Potential collaboration on speaking opportunities and presentations 
– Connecting and sharing knowledge with other coalition partners

Novartis had committed to be a pilot participant of the Natural Capital Protocol V0 testing period in 2015/16 and successfully completed the pilot.
We have started to apply practices of valuation of environmental and social capital in 2015. As a basis for environmental impacts we regularly determine the carbon and water footprints and assessed other environmental impacts of Novartis’ own operations and of the global materials supply chain.
The Executive Committee Novartis in 2015 also endorsed the voluntary use of an internal price on carbon of USD100 per ton CO2e. We apply this price in the evaluation of capital projects for GHG emission reduction and more general decision making in view of our climate impacts.

Want natural capital analysis with board level credibility? We can help.

PwC was part of the core team that developed the Natural Capital Protocol. PwC’s environmental valuation methodologies and Kering’s pioneering Environmental Profit & Loss (EP&L) (supported by PwC) were also two of the four proprietary methodologies selected by the Coalition’s Methodological Review Panel to inform the development of the Protocol. Our people have previously been central to other major collaborative efforts on natural capital including The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB), the WBCSD’s Guide to Corporate Ecosystem Valuation and the UK government’s Framework for Corporate Natural Capital Accounting.

Our established natural capital team combines the technical expertise of ecologists, engineers and economists, with the commercial insight of finance, operations and strategy consultants to deliver business critical analysis that our clients can rely on.

As you’d expect, our team know how to work with the leading models (they developed some of them), and where to source the best data. But from the start, we’re focused on your business challenge, and finding the right solution with you. If a straight forward discussion with our experts, and some back of the envelope calculations are all you need, then that’s what we’ll offer.

If you’re unsure where to start, our natural capital analytics workshop provides a great practical primer along with some immediate results from one of our desktop analytical tools. For example, our rapid natural capital diagnostic runs on some simple input data from your annual report and can hotspot natural capital risks and opportunities in your operations or supply chain live during the workshop.

Our vision is of a world where decision making, ways of working and resource allocation are based on the principles of accounting for value leading to increased equality and well-being and reduced environmental degradation.

Our mission is also closely aligned to the coalitions. We want to change the way society accounts for value through principles, practice, people and power:
Principles: Our principles will lead to the inclusion of social, environmental and economic value in decision making.
People: We will build and support a network of like-minded individuals who want to work with us to put these principles into practice.
Practice: We will develop guidance, tools, and support to help put the principles into practice.
Power: By connecting these individuals and supporting their learning, growth and influence we will build a movement to change the way society accounts for value.

Sustain Value is a natural and social capital consultancy firm that helps businesses to identify, value and manage environmental and social impacts and dependencies. We are a network-based consultancy led by James Spurgeon, drawing upon numerous experts around the world. As a result, we offer top international expert advice at affordable prices. James has undertaken well over 200 natural capital assessments over the past 20 years, including for many different business sectors around the world. He was a lead author and technical advisor for the Natural Capital Protocol and undertook the Roche deep dive pilot. He leads the EU Business and Biodiversity natural capital accounting for business workstream and has written numerous business guides on the subject including for WBCSD, IPIECA and A4S. He has also provided training on the topic including teaching environmental economics on a Masters course for four years.

Typical advisory services include undertaking: natural and social capital assessments; development of associated decision-support tools; project/site and strategy assessments; option appraisals; cost-benefit analysis and NPV studies; trade-off analysis; water valuation; environmental and social profit and loss accounts; biodiversity offsets and compensation assessments; net impact assessments; Net Positive; ecosystem services assessments etc.

Training courses range from brief 1 to 2 hour introductions to natural capital accounting for business, through to half day, one day and two day training courses. These are offered either directly by Sustain Value or working with others (e.g. with Eftec). Courses can be tailor-made to sectors or companies and held in-house.

Valuing Impact offers natural and social capital accounting and valuation services. It focuses in particular on methodologies and strategies development to operationalize those metrics into decision making processes of organizations. New approaches to value natural capital using distinct perspectives and linking those results with financial metrics is one of its strength.

This work helps organizations move beyond traditional sustainability activities and identify new business models, revenue streams and finance solutions to manage natural capital. The approach uses social capital accounting, when necessary, together with natural capital in order to get a comprehensive picture of your organization impact, accounting for positive and negative contributions.

Valuing Impact also offers one-day workshops to kick-start your exploration of the natural capital topic and build internal knowledge and capacity. Valuing Impact works with a completely transparent methodology and models to allow you to take ownership of the topic.

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) is a CEO-led organization of forward-thinking companies that galvanizes the global business community to create a sustainable future for business, society and the environment.

Our vision for 2050 is a world where all companies measure, value and report their true value, true costs and true profit in decision-making and disclosure. To inform decision-making and ensure meaningful reporting and disclosure, business needs to measure and value its relationship with natural and social capital in a credible and generally-accepted way. This reliable, relevant and fit for purpose information can then be integrated so that in the future, business systematically accounts for natural and social capital, in the same way that it does for financial capital.

Building on 20 years of experience and expertise developing business-led tools and approaches around GHGs, water, ecosystem services, biodiversity, forest management and more, WBCSD worked with many experts to led the development of the Natural Capital Protocol on behalf of the Coalition.

Along with other activities, WBCSD is now leading the development of a Toolkit that aims to complement, and facilitate business uptake of, the Protocol, working with the Coalition as its strategic partner and an Advisory Group that is open to all. The Toolkit will consolidate the wealth of tools, methodologies and approaches available for natural capital measurement and valuation, and map them against the Protocol’s international, standardized framework. It will be an online interactive platform that is constantly updated.