How can we account for the value (s) of Nature?
06/17/2025
3 min
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In light of the urgency of climate and environmental challenges we are facing, what steps can companies take to better preserve nature? In this video (available in French with subtitles) Professor Marion LIGONIE, presents some of her coauthored *research on integrating nature into corporate accounting, coauthored with her colleague Sarah MAIRE.
Accounting provides a snapshot of a company’s financial situation. It reports on the resources used, the activities carried out with those resources, and the value created. These figures are important because they influence the choices made by shareholders, investors, banks, and the government with regard to the company, and even those made by executives and managers within the company. Financial language is therefore the language of decision-making in business. However, as Professor LIGONIE explains there are many aspects of business activities that are excluded from traditional accounting.
For example, when a company builds on the habitat of an animal or plant species, this ‘destruction’ is invisible in the company’s accounts. Furthermore, how many times a day do we see packaging or paper left on the ground? This pollution is not taken into account either.
“Traditional accounting only allows us to see part of the resources used and the value created (or destroyed),” explains the expert. “Nature is too often omitted and decisions are made without it, with the result we all know: dramatic destruction,” she adds.
Alternative models to integrate nature
This is why alternative models are being developed to integrate Nature into accounting. For example, reporting that focuses on three areas of performance: financial, environmental, and social (the triple bottom line) . But this raises many technical questions, such as: How do we value different natural elements? How much does a plastic bottle left in a forest acually cost? a And how do we integrate this value into the accounts?
Professor LIGONIE points out that this also raises philosophical questions. Should we assign a monetary value to nature? Doesn’t nature have an intrinsic value, that cannot be translated? What does this say about the position of human beings in relation to nature? We need to find a way to anchor nature in our ways of organizing ourselves.
New accounting models
She notes that a number of researchers at IÉSEG and elsewhere are working towards this goal, and companies are experimenting with these new accounting models, such as Danone with the LIFTS model, Fermes d’Avenir with the CARE model, and Kering with the environmental P&L.
*Quelle(s) valeur(s) donner à la Nature ? by Marion Ligonie & Sarah Maire from IÉSEG (Revue Française de Gestion, 2024)
