The Standardisation of Natural Capital Accounting Methodologies

Abstract

The global ecological crisis has prompted the development of tools that try to redefine relations between business and nature, among them, natural capital accounting methodologies. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) recently set standards on which these methodologies are based. Other actors, including the Big Four audit and accounting firms, developed their own methodologies outside the scope of ISO. This chapter examines why and how ISO developed natural capital accounting standards that are likely to compete with other methodologies. From the assumption that standards are not just technical, but also political instruments, it argues that they shape the future by creating power relations between actors within and outside ISO. The chapter suggests that these ISO standards aims at competing with first-movers' methodologies, in particular on the power implications resulting from transparency. It builds the argument on international political economy approaches to emphasise the link between technical specifications and power relations in contemporary capitalism.

Natural Capital Accounting Informing Water Management Policies in Europe

“…Some of the most dominant issues include uncertainty pertaining to our capacities to anticipate the future, the quality of gathered information, and a faulty understanding of the system of interest [148]. Nevertheless, developing standards for natural capital accounting and further improving current methodologies can foster a better understanding of the complexities of the system, transforming them into manageable risks through the use of a single unit of measurement to express the condition, extent, and value of different aspects of nature [149,150], thus improving water management.…”

Costs-benefit Analysis for the use of Shallow Groundwater as non-conventional Water Resource

“…The TEV method (Total Economic Value), resumed in Fig. 1) can be used to estimate parametric benefits (Randall 1987;ISO 2019;Maechler and Graz 2020). This approach combines the evaluation of values related to the direct use of water resources (use values) and values not related to direct use (non-use values).…”