"Natural resources provide the fundamental raw material that businesses use in the production and sale of their goods and services. Continued and sustainable provision of many of these natural resources depends on the proper functioning of the natural ecosystem – what could be termed as the Earth’s business model," states Dr Amama Shaukat, a Reader (Associate Professor) in Accounting and Finance at Brunel Business School, in a written evidence co-authored with Professor Grzegorz Trojanowski and Dr Quintin Rayer.
In some of the key reccomendations authors emphasise that:
- Regulation is likely to play a key role in facilitating greening of the economy.
- They would recommend supporting the BSI (British Standards Institution) in developing a PAS (Publicly Available Specification) as a standard to define minimum offset requirements.
- Instead of the taxonomy approach, the authors would advocate that “greenness” of investments is assessed based on objective indicators capturing their environmental impact (e.g., in the case of energy generation, cut-off rules based on characteristics such as CO2 emissions per kWh generated or land area required per kWh generated).
- They believe that the efforts of establishing international standards for natural capital investments should be co-ordinated internationally (alongside other jurisdictions and financial centres).