In this interview in el Ágora – diario del agua, our Executive Director,  explains how natural capital approaches addresses water protection, biodiversity conservation and climate change adaptation in a holistic manner, instead of separately.

David also emphasises that natural capital thinking incorporates not only a vision of the impacts, but also a vision of the dependencies on nature, and in particularly it includes a value proposition. That is, why nature and natural capital is important to business and society. 

This approach seeks to incorporate an integral valuation of impacts and dependencies, which is precisely one of the reasons why business are not taking natural capital into consideration. Large part of the business sector is not taking into account impacts that business operations have on natural capital, or what are their dependencies from it. In order for companies to be aware of the relevance that natural capital has for their business, the concept of “economic valuation” of the relationship between business and nature is incorporated. This allows to know how relevant is the relationship between business and nature in economic terms.

During the interview, David also stresses that innovation has a key role given that natural capital does not stop being a transformative element, a new paradigm that requires research on what are the best valuation techniques, which tools can be used, or what new communication instruments are more adequate. He also points out that investment in natural capital has to be seen as an investment rather than a expenditure, and that thanks to climate policies business sector interest in biodiversity and natural capital is growing because organisations are realising that climate change and biodiversity cannot be dissociated.