Numerous efforts and initiatives to advance and develop natural capital thinking have emerged over the past 10 years. The approaches vary across disciplines and the private and public sectors resulting in a cluttered and confusing landscape. Are they competing, are they useful, are they the same? Can they be streamlined to maximise our collective efforts?
The problem of natural capital depletion and degradation requires a concentrated, unified effort. Coordination and participation across public and private sectors, and across disciplines is needed at an unprecedented scale in order to preserve life as we know it on Planet Earth.
IDEEA Group is supporting the Natural Capital Coalition to deliver the Combining Forces Initiative. It is the first step towards seeking to build a common language that will enable the exchange of ideas and ongoing innovation aimed at conserving natural capital.
The public sector approach to NCA applies the UN SEEA (United Nations System of Environmental-Economic Accounting) framework, whilst the overarching framework for the private sector is the Natural Capital Protocol. These approaches use complementary valuation techniques to understand the relative importance and worth of the natural world on which we collectively depend.
Next week (Nov 26-30 2018), IDEEA Group will travel to Paris to participate in Natural Capital Week 2018.
IDEEA Group Director Carl Obst and Natural Capital Coalition Executive Director Mark Gough, will facilitate a session on the Combining Forces Initiative at the 3rd Forum on Natural Capital Accounting for Better Policy.
Simon Cook (Forico) will also be making the trip to present on the work program completed by Forico and IDEEA Group. He will be on a panel during the session on the Combining Forces Initiative and will also be making a presentation during the Natural Capital Coalition: Collaboration Day. He will discuss the reasons behind linking up with IDEEA Group to apply natural capital accounting using the UN SEEA to the Forico forest estate.