Accounting for Nature
Why nature matters to accountants
- Board Members (executive and non-executive directors): Establish nature-related strategies and oversee performance.
- Senior Managers (CEOs, CFOs, COOs, finance directors, and other leadership roles): Integrate nature into strategic planning and decision-making.
- Analysts: Incorporate nature-related risks and opportunities into analysis.
- Report Preparers: Ensure accurate and complete nature-related disclosures.
- External Auditors and assurance practitioners: Assess the accuracy and transparency of nature-related information.
For each of these roles, you’ll also find five actionable steps to get started, real-world case studies showcasing best practices, and a curated list resources to further support you along the way.
The guide was developed and prepared by ICAEW for the Global Accounting Alliance (GAA), of which Chartered Accountants Ireland is a member. It launched on World Wildlife Day, 3 March, to emphasize the importance of reversing global nature loss to business resilience and economic prosperity.
What is biodiversity?
Biodiversity is the variety of life on earth. It includes all the different types of living things and habitats. It is often referred to as the ‘web of life’. Our societies and economies depend on it.
It is rapidly rising up the corporate agenda as more and more companies understand the need to protect it.
Why biodiversity matters to businesses
Every business relies on nature, has an impact on and is impacted by it.
For businesses, biodiversity means everything from clean air and water, fuel and food. For example, agribusiness relies on the diversity of wild relatives of major food crops, as a resource to ensure crop resistance to disease and pests.
Businesses rely on biodiversity for the wellbeing of their staff, their consumers, in their own operations and along their supply chains.
Businesses are also coming under increasing pressure to support protection of biodiversity, and as such will be expected to know about biodiversity action and to engage with it. The International Finance Corporation, a member of the World Bank Group, describes biodiversity as a fundamental component of long-term business survival.
Benefits of supporting the protection biodiversity can include:
- mitigating risk of regulatory non-compliance, reputational damage and supply chain disruption
- employee engagement and wellbeing
- enhanced reputation
- achieving responsible-business targets.
Biodiversity and Chartered Accountants Ireland
On March 3, 2022, Chartered Accountants Ireland Chartered Accountants Ireland joined a profession-wide commitment to reverse nature loss. Working together as part of the Global Accounting Alliance (GAA), the CEOs of some of the world’s leading accountancy institutes signed the call to action ‘Nature is Everyone’s Business’ to signal the important role the profession plays in this crisis. In 2024, we reaffirmed our commitment to be part of the solution.
In the links below, find out how nature is everyone's business, and what businesses can do to protect it.
What is natural capital?
'Natural capital' has its origins in the concept of capital as a stock that can give rise to goods and/or services. In the case of natural capital, the stock is natural resources or ecosystems such as forests, water, grassland or air, while the goods and services (known as ‘ecosystem services’) that flow from the stock include raw materials for production and consumption (fuel or food, for example), the absorption of wastes from production and consumption, and the fundamental life-supporting services provided by nature.
What is natural capital accounting?
'Natural Capital Accounting' is a system for organising information about our ‘natural capital’ to help decision-makers understand how the environment interacts with the economy. ‘Natural capital’ frames the world's resources like plants, animals, water, and minerals as assets or stocks that yield a flow of benefits to people. Measuring these resources to show their benefits to society and the economy and to support more sustainable decision-making is described as the ‘Natural Capital Approach’.
Natural Capital Accounting in 3 minutes
This video breaks down the concept of natural capital accounting, showing how accounting for nature can help reveal many of its hidden values.
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Actions
Here are some actions you can take in your business to combat nature loss (courtesy of Business in the Community Ireland):
- participate in the The Nature Strategy Accelerator Programme from Business for Biodiversity Ireland. This programme is designed to help businesses develop and implement effective nature strategies
- follow Business in the Community Ireland and Business in the Community Northern Ireland's biodiversity content
- educate your senior team and put biodiversity at the top of their agenda
- take part in collective campaigns such as Business for Nature’s #MakeItMandatory
- collaborate with your peers to understand what has worked well for their business
- integrate biodiversity into your climate action plans because Nature-Based Solutions will play a key role in both mitigating and adapting to the effects of climate change
- incorporate biodiversity into your Environmental Management System (EMS).
You can also plant biodiveristy-friendly plants anywhere you can. See Chartered Accountants Ireland's
balcony planting for ideas.
Resources
The Business for Biodiversity Platform
Funded by the Irish Government, this not-for-profit initiative encourages and incentivises Irish businesses to assess their impacts and dependencies on biodiversity, with a view to mitigating and availing of associated risks and opportunities respectively.
Accelerate, The Business Pact for Climate and Nature
Accelerate: The Business Pact for Climate and Nature is a collective action campaign from Business in the Community Ireland, the movement for sustainable change in business. Its purpose is to inspire and enable businesses to bring about a sustainable, low carbon economy and a more inclusive society where everyone thrives.
All-Ireland Pollinator Plan
The All-Ireland Pollinator Plan (AIPP) is a framework bringing together different sectors across the island of Ireland to create a landscape where pollinators can survive and thrive. Implemented by the National Biodiversity Data Centre, it provides information and free resources to help, whether you have a business, a farm, a community group, a garden, or a window box.
To date, over 280 businesses in Ireland have signed up to the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan (AIPP) and have committed to at least one pollinator-friendly action within the first year of signing up, and plan to carry out two additional actions within the following five years.
Find out more in the FAQs for Business section.
The GAA’s Progress and Pathway to 2030
The report from the Global Accounting Alliance (GAA) examines key trends impacting the accountancy profession, including the increasing emphasis on transparency, reporting, and regulation concerning nature-related issues. It outlines the steps that the GAA and its members will take to further accelerate collective progress towards our nature commitments, in alignment with the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).
ENCORE
ENCORE (Exploring Natural Capital Opportunities, Risks and Exposure) is a tool to help users better understand and visualise the impact of environmental change on the economy. Developed by the Natural Capital Finance Alliance in partnership with UNEP-WCMC and financed by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) and the MAVA Foundation, the tool focuses on the goods and services that nature provides to enable economic production. It guides users in understanding how businesses across all sectors of the economy potentially depend and impact on nature, and how these potential dependencies and impacts might represent a business risk.
The ENCORE tool allows users to input basic information about their business sector and activities. The tool then downloads a list of relevant impacts and dependencies.
WWF – Biodiversity Risk Filter
The WWF’s Risk Filter tools - the Water Risk Filter and Biodiversity Risk Filter - enable companies and investors to assess and respond to nature-related risks to strengthen resilience. The WWF Biodiversity Risk Filter is designed to be used as a corporate and portfolio-level screening tool to identify biodiversity risks and prioritise corporate action on biodiversity. It covers broad aspects of biodiversity (e.g., freshwater, marine, forest, grasslands, wetlands) and allows businesses to:
- Understand their impacts and dependencies on biodiversity
- Map out physical biodiversity risks
- Assess biodiversity risks across operations, value chain and investments.
Biodiversity Maps Ireland
Biodiversity Maps, from the National Biodiversity Data Centre, provide an overview of the state of knowledge on the distribution of Ireland's biodiversity.
According to Business in the Community Ireland, there are multiple ways in which businesses can use Biodiversity Maps, such as drawing a polyglot over a selected area e.g., business site, and then downloading a report of plant and animal species recorded within the boundaries of the polyglot. This helps businesses decide what appropriate actions they can take to protect and enhance the habitats for the plant and animal species listed e.g., altering mowing regimes if rare bees are collecting pollen or installing bird feeders.
Wildlife Habitat Council (WHC)
The Wildlife Habitat Council (WHC) is an international not-for-profit which empowers companies to advance biodiversity, sustainability, employee engagement and community relations goals. Working with businesses on conservation projects for over 30 years, the WHC has developed a large bank of tools, tips and case studies of businesses that have undertaken voluntary projects on their lands to support sustainable ecosystems that surround them.
Business and Biodiversity Charter
In Northern Ireland, Business in the Community has created a Business and Biodiversity Charter as a framework for businesses to engage with biodiversity. The Charter is based around a staged approach, and is applicable to all organisations from micro-businesses to large facilities owned by multi-national companies.
Business for Nature is a global coalition that brings together business and conservation organizations and forward-thinking companies.
It works with more than 70 international and national partners and a diverse group of businesses from all sectors, sizes and geographies. It encourages companies to commit and act to reverse nature loss, and advocate for greater policy ambition. Its Strategic Advisory Group ensures its work is grounded in real business and act as ambassadors for the coalition.
"Together, we demonstrate credible business leadership on nature and amplify a powerful leading business voice calling for governments to adopt policies now to reverse nature loss this decade."
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