Natural Capital

At its heart, the nature crisis is a crisis of values. The economic system in its current form places no value on biodiversity, ecosystems and the benefits they provide society unless they directly contribute to the market. Natural capital is a powerful framing to correct this, leveraging the language of capital – of stocks, flows, assets and services – to convey nature’s value to a wider audience. Performing valuation – estimating the value of natural assets and the ecosystem services they provide in monetary terms – allows this to be integrated into the economic system in a meaningful way. 

Utilising the natural capital lens, we help businesses and policy makers to understand their dependency on the natural world to support better decision making, and ultimately, protect what matters.

With the Nature Positive movement developing at a rapid pace, businesses have at last woken up to the reality of the nature crisis and are now actively seeking to contribute to a nature positive future. However, many are new to the topic, overwhelmed by the complexity, and struggling to know what to do and where to start. No matter where you stand as a business, contributing to nature positive is a journey, not a destination, and the path each business must follow is context dependent. Nature is highly localised, and with so many potential avenues, it is crucial to come up with a plan.

We support clients in navigating the nature disclosure landscape and are guide companies in the development of nature strategies. In a complex and constantly evolving space, we cut through the noise, focus on what is most important, and build a robust plan to drive impact at scale.

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The many services we offer under this theme fall into four key stages: Learn, Assess, Communicate, Act.

  • Our bespoke nature training workshops are an efficient way to learn from experts with diverse project experience.

  • Nature is highly localised and sector specific. We help you understand and articulate why it is an important issue for your context.

  • All companies are at different stages in their nature positive journey. We locate where you are, and what to focus on to move forward.

Learn

  • As natural capital and ecosystem service valuation experts, we quantify and value natural assets and the benefits they provide businesses/society at multiple scales, from a single project area of influence to a whole country.

  • Understanding the state of nature in the vicinity of your operations is a crucial first stage to managing your impact. Combining existing project information with global data layers, we generate a reference point to measure change over time.

  • Having undertaken LEAP framework assessments on two companies from diverse sectors (extractives and finance), we understand the nuances involved in assessing nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks and opportunities (DIROs).

  • We develop effective tools designed to meet our clients needs and support decision-making. To date, our tools have covered various topics, from natural capital to water valuation. Developed off the back of two TNFD pilot studies and a corporate biodiversity strategy project, our new Nature Interface Assessment Tool (NIAT) fast tracks the Locate stage of LEAP, rapidly identifying priority locations based on their sensitivity. 

Assess

  • The TNFD now has over 500 adopters. Disclosing nature-related issues, while still voluntary in most jurisdictions, is clearly the direction of travel. We help you prepare for what’s coming—identifying material issues, prioritising key metrics, and developing clear, credible reporting strategies.

  • EP&Ls can be powerful communication tools to show how your operations both depend on and impact nature. We help quantify and monetise these flows in a way that resonates with internal and external stakeholders.

  • We produce decision-useful natural capital accounts—linking biophysical and economic data to inform planning, operations, and reporting. This can support internal decisions as well as public or investor-facing communication.

  • Meaningful engagement is key to building awareness and buy-in for nature-related action. We design and facilitate engagement processes tailored to your goals. This can involve internal workshops to build understanding of your company’s nature-related issues, as well as external engagements with affected stakeholders to co-create and communicate action plans.

Communicate

  • We guide companies through the development of comprehensive, actionable nature strategies aligned with international goals (e.g. GBF, SBTN, TNFD). These include clear commitments, practical steps, and robust governance structures to deliver nature-positive outcomes.

  • Where companies have significant impacts on biodiversity, we develop BAPs, including No Net Loss/Net Positive Impact (NNL/NPI) targets, mitigation hierarchies, offset planning and monitoring frameworks.

  • For public sector and NGO clients, we apply natural capital accounts and ecosystem service values to explore policy options and trade-offs under different future scenarios. This supports more integrated and sustainable decision-making across sectors.

Act

Why choose Sustain Value?

Drawing upon our 30 years' experience in the space, our core offering has always been related to natural capital. We are experts in the quantification and valuation of natural assets and ecosystem services and in compiling natural capital accounts. Our project experience spans terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems, and multiple scales, from small-scale projects to entire national jurisdictions.

Our experience advising companies on the management of nature-related issues goes back long before the TNFD, SBTN and many of the other frameworks were in existence. Our Director, James Spurgeon, was lead author on the Natural Capital Protocol and Sustain Value has supported many multinational companies on this theme. We recently carried out two TNFD pilot studies and developed a high-level biodiversity strategy for a global steelmaking business.