The UBS Sustainability and Impact Institute wants to bring natural capital accounting into the mainstream to help meet the UN Convention on Biological Diversity’s aim to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030.
Their recent white paper, titled Taking root, says:
‘The UN’s 2030 biodiversity reversal target could already be out of reach, but it remains important for the world to coalesce around a natural capital quantitative process as soon as possible, so that we can quantify the problem of biodiversity loss and begin to reverse it.’
Here’s a snapshot of their findings:
- Natural capital accounting emerged from academia decades ago and, since then, governments have driven its development from the top down.
- While governments play a vital role, natural capital accounting is entering the mainstream too slowly to meaningfully support the 2030 goals.
- Complementary efforts from finance, corporates and NGOs can expedite its development from the bottom up.
- Private sector organisations can speed up the development of natural capital accounting by pursuing their own analysis.
- Bottom-up efforts will bring natural capital accounting into the mainstream by providing data, establishing credibility, ensuring future reporting is fit-for-purpose and innovating while standardising.
The white paper provides an idealised plan for how the bottom-up and top-down approaches can work together to bring natural capital accounting into the mainstream by 2030.
IDEEA Group wholeheartedly supports the concept of combining both top down and bottom up efforts. We agree that building awareness, effectively using shared data and standardising natural capital approaches will help bring natural capital accounting into the mainstream.