What is natural capital accounting?
Accounting for our environment
Australia's environment is fundamental to our quality of life and prosperity. Every day it provides us with goods and ecosystem services, such as clean air, fresh water, food and fibre. Natural capital accounting, also known as environmental-economic accounting, is a framework for integrating economic and environmental data to better understand our environmental assets. It helps us to describe changes in ecosystems and how these impact our well-being and our economy.
Natural capital accounting is important to the private and public sectors because nature underpins our economic growth, but it is currently left out of the tools that businesses and governments use to inform their decisions. Our researchers are helping to standardise how to report our interactions with nature so companies and governments can better understand how their activities affect and depend on nature, and more confidently report these to shareholders and the public.
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