Standards Development

Scope

This British Standard provides specifications and guidance for the process preparing natural capital accounts including minimum requirements for defining the boundary of an account and the material impacts and dependencies; and documenting the data and process used to prepare the natural capital account.There are two key accounting outputs of natural capital accounts prescribed – each with supporting schedules:a)    a natural capital balance sheet (showing the organization’s dependency on the natural capital assets); and NOTE 1 Scope 1 includes the natural capital assets the organization owns or has responsibility or influence over, and assets that are not owned by anyone. Scope 2 includes other natural capital assets. The organization’s expenditure on the maintenance of natural capital assets it depends on is included in both scopes.b)    a natural capital income statement (showing the positive and negative impacts of the organization).NOTE 2 Scope 1 includes the operations of the organization and Scope 2 includes the operations throughout its value chain.This British Standard is applicable to organizations of all types (public, third sector and listed and unlisted private) across all sectors, and of any size (such as SMEs and larger businesses) and may apply to one or more sites in which they operate. A group of organizations dependent on the same natural capital assets or considering collaborating to change their impacts may produce joint natural capital accounts. This standard is applicable internationally.This British Standard is intended to be used by those who will be preparing the accounts. These could be environmental and sustainability professionals, accountants, economists and others working in collaboration.The accounts aim to provide beneficial information to managers of organizations, and their stakeholders such as investors, auditors and those responsible for assurance, certification bodies, regulators/policy makers, customers and the wider public. The standard recognizes that the process of preparing the accounts could be as informative as the results presented in the accounting outputs.This British Standard does not apply to national or sector-wide natural capital accounts, which are covered by the UN System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (Experimental Ecosystem Accounting) [1] within the context of the System of National Accounts.[1])