Natural Capital

The Natural Capital includes all the goods of the Earth (soil, air, water, flora and fauna) and their derived Ecosystems Services, which make human life possible. Natural Capital goods and services have a yearly value of billions of dollars and provide foods, materials, water, health, energy, gas regulation, climate security and other essential services.

Allocating a value to such services and to the constituent elements of Natural Capital that produce them allows better dimension of the identification of the impacts, its measurement and specially their place in value in the most appropriate way for decision making, using the same metrics as those used by the organizations to decide on the financial capital, the productive capital and the capital assets: Euros.

The conversion into currency of the Capital Natural allows to display in Euros the impacts that the environmental assessment studies of projects traditionally valued with adjectives (compatible, moderate, severe, critical…), accomplishing a reduction of the subjectivity of the valuations and easing the verification of the sustainability of a project.

It is an objective set forth by the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 “Bringing Nature Back into our
Lives”

“Biodiversity considerations need to be better integrated into public and business decision-making at all levels”.

“This will include measuring the environmental footprint of products and organizations on the environment, including through life-cycle approaches and natural capital accounting ”.

Objectives

It is useful and efficient for any organization that needs to estimate the economic value of its impacts over the natural capital, whether negative or positive, for any of the following OBJECTIVES:

  1. Estimate the value of negative impacts   on natural capital.
  2. Estimate the value of positive impacts on natural capital.
  3. Offset negative impacts with positive ones:
    • Over the natural capital as a whole or over certain groups of ecosystem services.
    • At present moment or in the future.

What for

The main purposes of the monetary valuation of the impacts (whether negative or positive) over the natural capital rising from the variation (reduction or increase) of the value of the ecosystem services are:

  • Being more responsible and to project such image to shareholders, clients, investors, partners, financial services, public administrations (public tenders for public contracts), citizenship, etc. 
  • Measuring and quantifying the impacts generated over the Natural Capital to be aware of their direct value and, therefore, of the positive or negative effects that the company, organization or project generates through its production and commercial activities, its supply chain as well as its indirect value, which is the basis for the opinions of stakeholders and external groups of interest that influence on the decisions taken by the public administrations and the citizenship..
  • Reducing the lack of trust and awareness of some stakeholders and groups of interests  who magnify those adjectives commonly used to assess the environmental impacts by providing in exchange their economic valuation.
  • Contributing with an extra feature the documents to be submitted for the public tenders for works and services contracts, explaining and quantifying the Capital Natural of the activity to be tendered for, in comparison with other alternatives.

 

Why

  • The economic valuation of positive impact activities allows for a better decision taking.
  • The Economic Valuation of Natural Capital is an activity inherent to the compliance with the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 “Bringing Nature Back into our Lives”, and the principles adopted by the WBCSD.  This information must be considered as complementary (next step) to the rest of the information on sustainability managed by the organization. Furthermore, the information obtained is fully compatible and in above with the Commonly Used Standards for both: the reporting of the Non Financial Information by the companies (TCFD, GRI,and SASB) and the qualifying of the investments for funds/financial institutions, as being their facilities responsible and/or sustainable with the natural environment.
  • In summary, it is a tool for those institutions aiming to be more responsible and to project such image to the public opinion and the administration, the investors and the financing entities.

What we do

1. Estimate the natural capital monetary value of natural capital within a geographic area.

2. Estimate the impact caused by polluting or land transforming activities

3. Compare the economic value of the impact against of other alternatives (ranking).

3b. Identify the alternatives to compensate with positive impacts.

Calculation of the responsible value of nature