The Albert Luthuli Centre for Responsible Leadership(ALCRL) and the African Centre for Technology studies (ACTS) co-published an important working paper which proposes key principles and methodology foundations for an integrated financial natural capital accounting and reporting framework, which can be used to fulfil the aspirations of integrated reporting guidelines.

This report was launched in November 2014 and has already received very positive feedback locally and internationally.

Business and government leaders around the world increasingly need an effective way of managing business dependencies and impacts on the ecosystem. As a result, financial institutions have recently made a formal commitment to work towards integrating natural capital considerations into their decision-making processes, including improving the accounting and disclosure practices of reporting organisations.

This paper argues that a solid accounting foundation is required for integrated reporting practices to show the broader and longer-term consequences of corporate decision making. This involves using the individual transactions recorded in financial accounting systems as the focal point to link financial and non-financial data, hence embedding natural capital accounting into company data recording and management routines.

Click here for the full report.