Ecological Accounting : How to organize information for biodiversity conservation decision and action at the national, business and ecosystem levels?

This paper was prepared in the context of the NGFS (The Network for Greening the Financial System)-INSPIRE (The International Network for Sustainable Financial Policy Insights, Research, and Exchange) study group on Biodiversity and Financial stability.Outline – The first part of this paper will discuss our reasons to turn to the academic and practical field of ecological accounting at different levels of decision and organization (national, business and ecosystem); and our choice to adopt a strong sustainability and maintenance cost-based approach. Based on these foundations, we will then present three complementary ecological accounting methods at the national level (the Unpaid ecological costs approach); at the business level (the Comprehensive Accounting in Respect of Ecology model) and at ecosystem management level (the Ecosystem-centric management accounting approach). We will conclude by highlighting the need to continue to progress towards the interlinking of these methods.Issue addressed in this paper – In order to contribute to the multiple efforts for the transformation of our economy into a system that effectively maintains and restores biodiversity, we introduce a proposal aimed at going further in the integration of ecosystem-interdependencies information at the heart of organizational processes and decision-making procedures at different levels. These methods also aim to take into consideration the great variety of decision-making and action contexts that characterize the realm of biodiversity conservation. We argue that such an endeavor requires to turn to the field of “ecological accounting”, both on a conceptual level and on a practical level, to put forward concrete methods and tools for collective decision and action. The paper hence addresses the following question: what kind of ecological accounting concepts and methods can be sense-making and scientifically sound, to support the management of biodiversity-related risks and reorganize our economic system towards the achievement of biodiversity conservation/restoration goals