Features — SoNCA

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Comparing natural capital accounting frameworks

by John Finisdore, Sustainable Flows · 1 October 2026

With rising nature-related risks, corporations are increasingly seeking more effective ways to track the state of nature, flows of ecosystem services and their monetary values.

Natural capital accounting (NCA) helps fill these needs by applying accounting concepts to an organisation’s nature data. Conventional environmental data often focuses on annual flows—such as greenhouse gas emissions or water consumption. NCA includes the stocks of natural capital, their condition, and how these change over time. It also includes the flows of ecosystem services on which people and the economy depend. For an organisation, NCA seeks to determine whether it is maintaining, degrading or enhancing the natural capital it impacts or depends upon.

The United Nations (UN) System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) set out NCA concepts for countries, and its Central Framework was adopted as an international statistical standard in 2012. For organisations, an early development was the 2015 UK Natural Capital Committee report that presented a framework for corporations to “document [natural capital] assets and liabilities in a balance sheet format that extends traditional financial reporting.” Corporate methods have grown, boosted by SEEA Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EA), which the UN adopted in 2021. The SEEA EA presents stock, flow and monetary accounts and uses established accounting concepts, such as accounting periods and asset accounts that reconcile opening and closing stocks, adapted to the distinctive characteristics of ecosystems. It can be applied at any spatial scale, from a single site to a whole country.

The corporate developments include the Biological Diversity Protocol, which focused on measuring the stocks of natural capital; ISO 14054, which drew heavily on the 2015 UK report and BS 8632; CSIRO’s Natural Capital Handbook, which adds to the discussion and was recently complemented by Smith et al. (2026); and Time to Take Stock, which proposed a definition of NCA for corporations and described its components.

This thinking spurred activity worldwide. Companies including BHP, Sibanye-Stillwater, Forico, and Olam have explored different accounting methods and presentations as their peers assess NCA’s usefulness. Other firms use NCA techniques for specific needs, sometimes without realising their origin and without building full accounts. For example, NCA techniques can measure progress towards no net loss of biodiversity.

Accounts and natural capital data at large need greater consistency, comparability and ultimately assurance for both internal use and external market credibility. In response, the Natural Asset Accounting Standards Board (NAASB) is developing standards for measuring, reporting, and assuring natural capital value, which it describes as comparable to US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) or International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).

But the development and uptake of NCA by corporations is far from complete. Several initiatives are working on this. The Forestry Natural Capital Project, led by the International Sustainable Forestry Coalition with the Capitals Coalition, the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) and others, is working with more than 20 forestry companies, from Weyerhaeuser to New Forests to Suzano. It aims to expand the use of NCA by the forestry sector and advance best practices. Accounting for Nature is building condition rating systems for ecosystems around the globe. A-Track, an EU-funded initiative, is mainstreaming natural capital assessment and accounting within businesses. Its efforts range from awareness to training to method development. It is also making concerted efforts to link NCA to corporate finance of nature and life cycle assessment practices.

The challenge is no longer simply to demonstrate that corporations can produce natural capital accounts. It is to determine which approaches work, where greater consistency is needed, and how corporate approaches can learn from—and contribute to—SEEA EA and the wider natural capital accounting community. This is precisely the kind of exchange the Society of Natural Capital Accounting (SoNCA) was established to support.

Seminar: Comparing natural capital accounting frameworks: what does the profession need to understand? Wednesday 21 October 2026, 8–9 am AEDT (Canberra and Sydney); 5–6 pm EDT on Tuesday 20 October (New York and Washington DC); 11 pm–midnight CEST (central Europe). Register here (free); your link to join will be in your confirmation email. To join the Society, see membership.

Disclosure: John Finisdore is a member of the Natural Asset Accounting Standards Board and of the A-Track advisory committee. The views expressed are his own and not necessarily those of the Society.

Past features

Title slide from the launch of the Society of Natural Capital Accounting, 18 August 2026

The Society launches: what you asked for

by Michael Vardon · 19 August 2026

The Society of Natural Capital Accounting (SoNCA) was launched on Tuesday 18 August 2026. One hundred and twenty four people registered, from Australia and from well beyond it. If you missed it you can watch it online or look at the slides.

The most useful part of the hour was not on the slides. We put four questions to the audience at the start, and there was much chat in the rest of the session. The one we cared about most was the third: what is the one thing you want from a professional society that you cannot get today?

The answers converged. People want a central platform to share experience, and not only the successes but the problems and how those problems were solved. They want access to a community of practice, and a view of what is happening in research, and in government and industry take-up. They want to see how Australia and the rest of the world understand, implement and expand on the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA), across both the SEEA Ecosystem Accounting and the SEEA Central Framework. Several raised comparability directly: how other people have handled the same awkward variable, and whether the answers are similar. Measurement challenges came up repeatedly, as did the continuing work of refining indicators. Underneath nearly all of it was the same thing: sharing good practice, connecting with others doing this work, and learning from experience that is currently locked inside the organisation that produced it. This is an excellent starting point for a work programme. The strong interest in a conference, tentatively Canberra in February 2027, was heartening, and if you would like to be involved in its planning, please let us know.

Twenty five registrants offered to present in the online seminar programme, which gives us a speaker list before we have even set the calendar. On working groups, the first candidate is the treatment of water in large artificial reservoirs as a produced asset, and the valuation of water resources in the SEEA Central Framework. Let us know if you would like to take part. Tell us too if you would like to lead a working group, or if there is a topic you think a group should be formed to address.

Membership opens shortly. Foundation membership is $180, with a concession rate of $90 that covers students, and a 10 per cent discount for anyone joining before 30 September. Sadly, the bank account is not yet open, so there is no payment link on the website now. As soon as it is open, we will put the link there and email everyone who asked us to. Foundation members are recorded as founders, shape the work programme and the working groups, and may vote and stand for election at the first annual general meeting.

The date and the form of that first annual general meeting are not yet settled. It may sit alongside the conference, or be held online later in the year, which would allow more members to take part. If you are watching the recording rather than the session, the four questions are still open. Send your answers to inquiries@naturalcapitalaccounting.org.

Watch the launch recording

Guatemala City skyline, host of the 32nd London Group meeting — Photo: Rene Hernandez, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Meet the London Group: debating and developing the SEEA

by Michael Vardon · 9 August 2026

The System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) did not arrive fully formed. Much of it was worked out in the London Group on Environmental-Economic Accounting, established in 1993 and first convened in London in 1994. It is an informal, voluntary group of experts, drawn mainly from national statistical offices and international organisations, that meets each year to advance methodological research and develop implementation advice for the SEEA. Its work fed into the SEEA Central Framework and SEEA Ecosystem Accounting. The London Group is currently chaired by Sven Kaumanns of the Federal Statistical Office of Germany. In September it holds its 32nd meeting in Guatemala City, hosted by the Bank of Guatemala.

The London Group's work currently centres on updating the SEEA Central Framework itself, which Carl Obst, editor of the revision, outlined at the Society of Natural Capital Accounting (SoNCA) launch on 18 August 2026. First adopted in 2012, it is being revised to keep pace with new demands, including climate change, the circular economy and biodiversity, and to stay consistent with the 2025 revision of the System of National Accounts (SNA). Much of the London Group's 31st meeting, held in Tallinn in September 2025, was given over to this update, and it will again take up most of the time of the 32nd meeting in Guatemala. This is where the detail of the SEEA is debated: how carbon and other emissions are recorded, how water and other assets are valued, how environmental taxes, subsidies and expenditures are classified, and how all of it lines up with the measures of the economy. Those debates reach well beyond the statistical offices. Whoever compiles or uses natural capital accounts, whether in business, finance, consultancy, government or research, will be working with the concepts debated and practices considered by the London Group. Following its deliberations is how practitioners across the field can keep up with what is coming and, in time, help shape it.

SoNCA is not part of this standards machinery, which is governed by the United Nations Committee of Experts on Environmental-Economic Accounting (UNCEEA), but many of our members are the practitioners who do this work. Raising awareness of the London Group's deliberations is part of the broader exchange of ideas and experience that SoNCA exists to support.