Natural Capital Leaders Platform

About

The Natural Capital Leaders Platform convenes companies with significant environmental impacts and dependencies who are taking action to review, value, redesign strategies, set targets and report on natural capital use. The goal of the companies is to reflect the external costs incurred in product lifecycles onto their balance sheets and to communicate these to society.

Through engagement with policymakers and collaborative working groups, members aim to:

• Identify impact and reliance on key ecosystem services such as climate stability, soil health, fresh water and biodiversity;
  
  
• Place a financial value on these services that reflects their true cost to society (in lieu of effective pricing signals from policy and regulatory frameworks); and
  
  
• Manage their demands on these services thoughtfully like other forms of asset, moving from a culture of doing less harm to the natural world to contributing positively to its renewal.

The Platform is facilitated by senior academics and experts from the University of Cambridge, and other institutions, to help business leaders understand how to integrate valuing natural capital into their strategies and create new opportunities for growth. 

Our Portfolio

The Platform offers an exciting portfolio of business collaborations, practical reports, tools and outputs to help address critical issues defined by business in order to inform their strategies and feed into the Platform’s policy agenda.

Get Involved

To discuss how your company can get involved, contact John Pharoah, T: +44 (0) 1223 768844.

11 and 13 June 2013: Natural Capital Leaders Platform hold their regional roundtables in Singapore and São Paulo

Olam International hosted our first annual roundtable in Singapore which convened a select group of companies across Asia representing diverse industries to discuss how business can better manage their impact and dependencies on nature’s services such as water and soils by beginning to explore ways of putting a value on nature. Two days later, Grupo Andre Maggi hosted the third annual roundtable in São Paulo with a different group of companies to address the same issues with a focus on the challenges in their region. This was an opportunity to share the work of the companies involved in the Platform, hear from Tony Juniper, CPSL Senior Associate and gather perspectives from companies working in emerging economies.

Watch a short version of the interview with Tony Juniper

4 April 2013: Sustainable Water Stewardship: Innovation through Collaboration Report Launch

The Sustainable Water Stewardship: Innovation through Collaboration report has been launched, recommending the next steps for business and government to better manage water resources. This report, sponsored by Anglian Water, is the culmination of this phase of our collaboratory which brought together forward-thinking organisations, government and communities to explore better ways of managing and valuing water by pioneering and exploring innovative approaches.

The next phase of this work will continue to develop innovative thinking, focusing on addressing the risks of flood and drought arising from changing weather patterns and increasing demand for water. We invite businesses to become a part of shaping this new development. Please contact Dr Gemma Cranston for more information.

Download Sustainable Water Stewardship: Innovation through Collaboration.

5 March 2013: UK Government’s Ecosystem Markets Task Force (EMTF)

Led by Ian Cheshire, Group Chief Executive of retail group Kingfisher plc, one of the lead Natural Capital Leaders Platform partners, and with the involvement of companies such as Unilever and Jaguar Land Rover, the Ecosystem Markets Task Force (EMTF) has reviewed the opportunities available to UK business that could help them develop green goods, services, investment vehicles and markets which value and protect nature.

Martin Roberts, Director of the Natural Capital Leaders Platform, was invited to join the Ecosystems Market Task Force to provide a unique perspective from academic and business collaborations.

Read more on the UK Government’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) website.

Ecosystem Markets Task Force Video: A New Lens for Business; A New Economy

February and March 2013: New Collaboratories Launched

The Natural Capital Leaders Platform is launching three exciting new collaboratories in February and March to continue its leading work helping global businesses to address the challenges of properly valuing and maintaining the Earth’s natural capital. The collaboratories are designed to enact the four business commitments outlined in the ground-breaking Natural Capital Leadership Compact.

6 December 2012: Pooling Innovation: New Approaches to Water Stewardship

Over 100 experts and thought leaders from business, academia and government met at the Pooling Innovation: New Approaches to Water Stewardship event in early December 2012 to discuss innovative ways to address the challenges of sustainable water management. The event, chaired by Lord Selborne, Treasurer, All-Party Parliamentary Group on Water, stimulated the dialogue around what leadership in water stewardship the public and private sectors can offer.

10 September 2012: Natural Convergence Report Launch

The 'Natural Convergence' report, the culmination of the UK Dairy and Timber land-use collaboratories, was launched by Natural Environment Minister Richard Benyon, Ian Cheshire, Group Chief Executive of Kingfisher plc. and Paul Kelly, Corporate Affairs Director ASDA Stores Ltd on 10 September 2012 at the Royal Society in London.

Tony Juniper; Paul Kelly, Asda; Ian Cheshire, Kingfisher; Richard Benyon, MP, Defra; Martin Roberts, CPSL

Linking Landscapes and Livelihoods

The Linking Landscape and Livelihoods collaboratory is designed for companies which have important relationships with smallholder farmers and seek to create positive social and environmental impact through their interactions. For many smallholder farmers, particularly those reliant on smallholdings on marginal land, the productivity of the land on which they depend for their livelihoods is being degraded and agricultural productivity is in decline. There is growing evidence that the expansion of smallholder agriculture activity impacts on natural capital beyond individual land holdings, resulting in forest loss, water stress, damaged soils and reduced biodiversity.

For extractive companies operating in developing countries, the relationships they develop with neighbouring communities are critical to the success of the company and its licence to operate. It is in both the company's and the smallholder’s interests that these livelihoods are sustainable, providing benefits to the wider community without undermining the natural capital on which the local economy depends.

The output for this phase of the collaboratory is a practical assessment framework that draws on diverse experience across different commodities and geographies in order to make a cost-effective case for interventions. In the second phase this framework will be used to inform interactions at scale in projects at key locations around the world.

The Right Value for Externalities: Phase II

Leading companies are becoming more aware of the need to consider the impacts of their operations on the natural environment and to identify the surrounding external factors that impact on their businesses: environmental externalities. This presents a great opportunity to deepen knowledge around the un-costed impacts associated with the production and consumption of goods and services.

In 2012, phase I of the Right Value for Externalities collaboratory convened a group of leading companies to develop an evidence-based, pragmatic framework to outline the methodologies for valuing externalities. The framework sought to make the evaluation of externalities accessible, designed to guide companies transparently through a process to undertake an evaluation of externalities. Phase II builds on phase I by enabling companies to pave the way on the actions that are needed to address externalities. The collaboratory objectives include:

• to develop the evaluation framework from Phase I to a practical guide to internally engage business around externalities and the valuation process;
  
  
• to communicate why the presence of externalities is of material consequence and significant concern for business;
  
  
• to outline where action is required and how companies can respond;
  
  
• to establish policy engagement to bring about change where the evidence suggests it is needed.

Natural Performance

This collaboratory offers companies the opportunity to work together to develop rigorous and realistic business targets and plans relating to natural capital. In particular, it focuses on the need for companies to look beyond their own direct impacts to review their product lifecycle impacts and dependencies and to understand where key local natural capital constraints or thresholds exist.

The key tool to assist companies with this process is the development of a metrics selection framework that shows the link between a company’s use of resources, the impacts that these activities have on natural capital and the context in which these activities are taking place. In particular, this framework highlights where a company’s activities are having a material impact on key local natural capital resource constraints and offers some new context-based metrics that companies could use.

The key outputs of this work are expected to be:

• A metrics selection framework;
  
  
• A natural capital thresholds scoping tool;
  
  
• Identification of the top 10 context-based metrics for different companies;
  
  
• In the longer term, increased ability of companies to demonstrate their progress, refine their strategies and improve their dialogue with board members, policymakers and investors.

Best Use of UK Agricultural Land

With industry concerns around understanding how recent government initiatives fit together and the lack of bold targets on future UK agricultural land use, the aim of this collaboratory is to provide a cross-industry vision, overarching framework and set of accompanying targets on how UK agricultural land use could be improved.

In developing this vision and framework, the collaboratory work will focus on understanding UK agricultural land potential and developing a powerful set of targets and policy messages to catalyse and prioritise action against four key strategic pillars:

1. Improving land productivity;

2. Enhancing UK security of supply;

3. Better protection of nature's services; and

4. Improving livelihoods of farmers.

The outputs are expected to include:

• A Compact between companies which publicly declares a commitment to delivering UK agricultural land use improvements.
  
  
• An industry conference with policymaker participation to launch the Compact.
  
  
• A set of supporting materials outlining a cross-industry vision, a framework that links existing initiatives with the four strategic pillars, a set of targets to catalyse industry action and a set of proposed policy improvements to be delivered to government.

Sustainable Water Stewardship: Phase 3

The paradoxical combination of increasingly frequent flooding and growing pressure on over-consumed water resources poses a genuine threat to current and future economic activity in the UK. The time is ripe for new players and new ways of thinking to come to the fore to contribute directly to our future resilience to water stresses.

The new phase of this collaboratory creates a shared business opportunity with multiple sectors by jointly considering the most efficient use of financial investments to implement solutions.

The work will undertake to:

• bring together leading businesses that have both direct and indirect dependencies on water;
  
  
• develop understanding of the consequences of their business operations and dependencies on the water system;
  
  
• resolve the problems of access to water, water quality and situations when there is too much water; and
  
  
• develop the financing and planning regimes that are required to bring these solutions to fruition and testing these in a pilot study.

A key deliverable of Phase 3 of the collaborator is the creation of an advice note for planners on integrated water management to ensure that water issues (at the strategic catchment level) in new developments are taken into account in local plans. This will ensure strategic water management objectives and outcomes are an integral part of the plan and are taken into account in deciding planning applications. The advice note is intended to support implementation of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) and complement any planning guidance that may be issued by DCLG.

Download a summary of the advice note for planners on integrated water management. This document is available for comment; please contact Katie Hiscock for more information.

From the beginning, a select group of companies have benefitted from and driven this influential and leading-edge business initiative.

Current Members