What’s happened and why?

Every organization prepares financial accounts, but hardly any produce natural capital accounts showing the importance of natural capital for their financial sustainability. To supply an authoritative approach, we’ve now published a first British Standard setting out good practice for preparing natural capital accounts.

What does BS 8632:2021 cover?

It provides specifications and guidance on the process of preparing natural capital accounts. It includes minimum requirements for defining the scope of an account and the material impacts and dependencies, and for documenting the data and process used to prepare the natural capital account.

It also presents the terminology, principles, steps and outputs of natural capital accounting with the aim that the process is transparent, repeatable and generates information that is comparable and useful for decision making.

Why use BS 8632:2021?

The standard supplies a systematic and verifiable approach that has the authority of a British Standard.

It produces outputs that can help an organization to:

• Identify its impacts, dependencies and value chain in respect of natural capital assets, and the associated risks and opportunities
• Communicate information and implications within the organization and with external stakeholders
• Adopt more informed strategic and operational decisions by integrating natural capital accounts with the assessment of other capitals
• Monitor and evaluate the impacts and effectiveness of such decisions and changes due to external factors

The standard’s use can also help organization fulfil their reporting and disclosure commitments like TCFD, UN Sustainable Development Goals and others.