Today is International Day for Biological Diversity
Nature, with its diversity of species, genes and ecosystems, provide ecosystem services that underpin the wellbeing of society and the economy. How can Impact Accounting help companies address Nature in business steering?
Impacts on nature lead to changes in the provision of ecosystem services. In impact accounting the changes in the benefits from ecosystem services are being assessed and valued.
Identify Risks
Areas with high impacts on nature are generally associated with greater physical and transition risks that need to be targeted in management, reporting and transition planning.
Measure Impacts
Impact accounting can help companies identify and quantify key impact drivers contributing to nature loss, by quantifying and valuing impacts from land use, resources use (like water and wood), carbon emissions or pollution - which are critical inputs to materiality assessments.
Climate & Nature Transition Planning
Impact accounting can serve as compass for focusing efforts on mitigating and reducing impacts and related risks. It can also demonstrate positive impacts from changing to more sustainable practices and investments, for example, into ecosystem restoration. Both is critical for navigating synergies and trade-offs between targets on climate and nature and for developing coherent transition plans.
Increasing resilience by working with Nature
Impact accounting can help decision making on sustainability strategies across own operations and value chains, reducing impacts and related risks, and increase resilience by identifying better ways of working with Nature.
VBA is currently developing a paper on the use of impact accounting for Nature.
In the meantime check out our summary on:
How is biodiversity and nature considered in VBA’s impact accounting?
and
VBA Blog on:
Why Valuing Nature Matters for Decision-Making?
Contact:
Dr. Johannes Förster
Co-Lead for Nature