In This Month's Newsletter:
Ocean 24 Awards: Winner!
Our work supporting the Sandeel fisheries ban
Corporate Natural Capital Accounting Workshops
Training for the Global Accounting Alliance
Continuing Work to Develop Ecosystem Accounting in the EU
How we are helping the EU to account for nature's value
Work to Support the Sandeel Fisheries Ban Receives Ocean 24 Award
Picture: Puffin with Sandeels, Rob Fraser, somewhere-nowhere.com
We were pleasantly surprised to hear that our work providing evidence to support the closure of Sandeel fisheries in the North Sea has won an Ocean Award from Blue Marine Foundation and BOAT International.
Sacha Bonsor, editor of BOAT International and co-chair of the judges, said:
“We had initially shortlisted the sand eel fishing ban in the innovation category, but our judges decided that this action was so remarkable, topical and distinctive it deserved its own category so we created a separate award for it, the Judges’ Special Award.”
We thank the judges for issuing this award, which is shared between the cohort of organisations that contributed to the closure of the fisheries: the UK and Scottish Governments, Natural England, the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the Government’s Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, and ABP Marine Environmental Research. We are grateful to our direct client, Natural England, for including the researchers and consultants in the list of contributors and winners.
Unfortunately, the ban is currently being contested by the EU in the first case of the post-Brexit dispute-settlement process being used. We hope this process can be resolved without a reopening of the fisheries and look forward to continuing to provide robust economic evidence for nature-positive action in the UK and around the world.
To read more and view the other award winners, click here.
Corporate Natural Capital Accounting Workshop for the Global Accounting Alliance
In September 2023, eftec joined the team invited by the Global Accounting Alliance to lead a series of workshops on corporate natural capital accounting (CNCA) with accounting professionals from Atlantic and Asia Pacific geographic regions.
This request followed the Capital Coalition’s publication of “Time to Take Stock” a working paper authored by ERM (who led this project), eftec, IDEEA Group, and the Biodiversity Footprint Company. The workshops were designed to raise awareness and understanding of CNCA among the GAA and its member bodies, to highlight its relevance to the financial accounting profession and to identify barriers and opportunities to its uptake.
Early adopters of CNCA shared their insights on capacity building, reputational risk management, investor engagement, identification of opportunities, and decision-making around land management. It was recognised that effective adoption of CNCA will require an improved understanding of CNCA for the accounting profession, internal and external capacity building for personnel and data, and development of standards.
The final report following these workshops is available here.
The lead author from ERM is also a member of the Working Group which is developing ISO 14054 (Natural Capital Accounting for Organizations). The Working Group Convener is our CEO, Ece Ozdemiroglu.
Continuing Our Work to Develop Ecosystem Accounting in the EU
We are currently working as part of a consortium led by VITO, including Ecounting and IDEEA, to provide support the production of ecosystem accounts in the European Union from 2024 to 2027.
This will involve providing methodological support to Eurostat and EU Member States, including further development of Eurostat’s INCA tool for environmental economic accounting. We will also be devising business solutions and procedures to build ecosystem accounts at the Member State and EU level and will be supporting regular data collections.
eftec is leading in the development of a consistent handbook for practitioners of the EU system of ecosystem accounting as well as working on validation workflows, analysing collected data, and providing recommendations.
We are happy to be a part of this important work and look forward to sharing more details with you all in the future.
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