Natural capital assessments are increasingly being used by businesses in corporate financial, risk and environmental management processes. However, there are currently a number of ‘data barriers’ to effective natural capital assessment and decision making in the private sector.
Failure to access robust data in natural capital assessments could result in a focus on ‘easier’ to measure assets, rather than dealing with the real complexities of natural capital. It could also undermine the value of natural capital assessments as a decision-making tool. Conversely, providing companies with guidance on key natural capital datasets, their limitations, and how to overcome them will enable more rigorous natural capital assessments and better management of risks and opportunities.
The Natural Capital Coalition, UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) and partners are working with businesses to address these data barriers and facilitate more robust and sophisticated analysis of corporate risk and opportunity through natural capital assessments, including through the ‘Data Information Flow’ project.
This report outlines the findings of the initial scoping phase of the project, which aimed to define the business needs relating to natural capital data, determine the extent to which existing natural capital data meet these needs, identify the barriers that limit the use of data for business needs, and identify potential solutions for delivery in a next phase of work.
The scoping finds that access, infrastructure, quality and capacity are the main barriers to the effective use of data to inform decision-making processes, and that these barriers exist throughout all stages of natural capital assessments. The report outlines potential response options for each of these data barriers.