The last report of IPCC on climate and land highlights the relationship between natural capital degradation, climate change and social welfare. It is well known that natural capital, as the pool of goods and services that nature provides, is the basis for a prosperous economy and a healthy society. In line with this, current legal environmental frameworks as the EU Green Deal, the EU Biodiversity strategy and the EU circular economy strategy, point out natural capital as a key aspect for sustainable development. Moreover, important investment decisions in the public and private sector are more and more dependent on companies’ environmental performance. Actually, the Commission as recently launched the EU taxonomy in order to classify human activities through its contribution to stop land degradation and climate change. At the same time that ESG criteria is gaining positions within financial markets.
Thus, companies have to disclose more complete and comprehensive information to their stakeholder and improve their external environmental reporting. In fact, more than 90% of the biggest companies around the world (G250 companies) disclose their sustainability performance. Unfortunately, almost all environmental impacts generated by the companies are simplified in terms of CO2 or water footprints, underestimating the scale of the impact and its social consequences. There is a clear need for comprehensive tools that quantify the impacts on natural capital and help to mitigate or compensate such impacts, so they keep up with the high environmental reporting standards, ultimately looking for a less intense carbon economy.
To bridge the gap between decision-making levels around no-net-loss of natural capital, we aim to design an online software that enables companies and public authorities to calculate their debt with nature (natural capital net debt), measure environmental impacts, design efficient mitigation and compensation actions, and disclose advanced environmental reports, ensuring the recovery of ecosystem services. This tool will enable private companies to reduce land degradation and to design environmental strategies that ensure no net loss of natural capital, with the subsequent positive impact to society.
