Unlocking Value Through the Capitals Approach: Insights from the NetRegs & Capitals Coalition Webinar

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On 3 February 2026, NetRegs hosted an informative webinar for the members of the Business Advisory Group (BAG), delivered in collaboration with SEPA and the Capitals Coalition.

The event was facilitated by:

• Martin Lok, Executive Director at Capitals Coalition
• Tom McKenna, Technical Senior Manager at Capitals Coalition
• Louise Amand, Education Senior Manager at Capitals Coalition
• Henning Diederichs, Senior Technical Manager at ICAEW

The aim of the session was to inspire and empower the participants to start strategic actions and to learn foundational knowledge on capitals. The session explored the Capitals Approach: a framework that helps organisations see how their work fundamentally depends on — and impacts — different types of resources, not just money. This session with NetRegs was the third training session delivered by Capitals Coalition in partnership with the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA).  

What is the Capitals Approach?

The Capitals Approach helps to reveal value that is previously excluded. It can help organisations map their dependencies, impacts, risks and opportunities, which supports not just disclosure and reporting but better decision-making, investment decisions, risk management and long-term resilience. 

The approach uses four types of capital to understand our dependencies and impacts on the surrounding world.

• Natural Capital – The stock of nature’s resources, like plants, animals, water, air, soil, and minerals that combine to yield a flow of benefits to people
• Human Capital – The individuals and their knowledge, skills, and abilities
• Social Capital – Relationships, shared values, norms and networks underpinned by trust that facilitate cooperation within and between groups
• Produced Capital – Human made goods and financial assets, such as buildings, machines, and money that are used to produce goods and services consumed by the society

The Capitals approach is compatible with existing sustainability related methods and approaches, such as circular economy, doughnut economy, nature-based solutions and different certification schemes. Understanding the similarities can work as an entry point, as many organisations are already doing some work within these themes but may be calling it something slightly different.

Capitals Coalition focuses on integrating those capitals into everyday decision-making across government, business and finance. The Integrated Decision-Making Framework focuses on looking at the capitals in an integrated manner – not separately but as a whole to support decision-making that truly takes into account all these aspects at once.
 
Why the Capitals Approach?

We are in the middle of a global poly-crisis. Climate change, biodiversity loss, and rising inequality are intertwined and interrelated, and they cannot be treated as separate issues, but need to be looked at as an interconnected whole if we aim to find fair solutions.

It is clear that the current economic system is not fit for purpose and fails to capture the true costs to nature and society. The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review (2021) highlights that the global natural capital declined by 30% between 1990 and 2015 – the increase in produced capital during these years has come at the expense of nature and society. Luckily, we are seeing some positive signs of the thinking changing. Different initiatives on more holistic approaches are emerging, for example disclosure frameworks such as The Taskforce for Nature Related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), The Taskforce on Inequality and Social-related Financial Disclosures (TISFD), European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) or the IFRS global sustainability disclosure standards by International Sustainability Standards Board. The Integrated Decision-Making Framework by Capitals Coalition joins these, focusing more on the decision-making phase – not just the disclosure.

What does it look like in practice?

Looking at case studies is important to take the theory into practice. During the webinar, two real-world examples to demonstrate the approach in practice were presented:

• Glenmorangie Distillery (Scotland): Investments in natural capital and long-term produced capital assets help the distillery to both decrease their impacts into their direct environment and at the same time, increase long-term business resilience and cut their costs. A combined investment in anaerobic digestion and an oyster bed reefs cuts organic discharges to the sea by 95%, reduces carbon emissions, supports biodiversity and improves their energy resilience.
• Liv Up SME Short Supply Chain (Brazil): An SME working with small farmers using a qualitative assessment. It shows improved producer income, community wellbeing, organic market growth and transparent social benefits.

We also explored how natural capital accounting complements financial reporting and how public and private sector disclosure frameworks are evolving. This supports decision-making as financial profit at a business level or GDP alone at a national level are insufficient measurements for decision making. Broader value measurement is essential for government and society.

One Planet Choices framework as a Scottish example

The capitals approach is not completely new to SEPA. The multi-capitals decision making framework ‘One Planet Choices’, was developed in partnership with Scottish Water to benefit the communities which both organisations serve and better prepare Scotland for delivering a sustainable future.

One Planet Choices provides the principles, framework and tools for joint decision making to achieve multiple outcomes that benefit society, the environment, and the economy. It can be used to inform the development of strategies, for sustainable catchment decisions, or decide between options for a specific place. It was designed to inform investment planning and regulatory decisions which require consideration of resource use and need to satisfy multiple stakeholder outcomes.

It applies three main principles:

1. Takes a whole system approach
2. Future focused
3. Encourages innovation

More information on “One Planet Choices” can be found here. 

It was successfully trialled with a range of partners from 2018 to 2022. The organisation is working to improve their understanding of applying a systems approach and support staff to embed capitals thinking across the business. The Capitals Approach is a similar approach to "One Planet Choices” and therefore in Scotland a lot of ground work has already been done for organisations to uptake the approach.

Next Steps

The webinar closed with a discussion on practical next steps. Participants highlighted the need for: 

• straightforward tools
• more case studies 
• and support tailored to SMEs. 

The good news is that there are already lots of helpful resources and easily accessible and easy to use tools. For the beginners in this space, an easy place to start is for example taking the Capitals Coalition Coursera Course, exploring the OnboardNature resource navigator of the A-Track project or taking a look at the case study database on the Coalition website.
 
For many attendees, this was just the starting point of a promising journey toward more informed, resilient and sustainable decision making. NetRegs will build some information around this topic and other sustainability concepts. Stay tuned. 

Do you have any suggestions of what we should cover for this topic on our website? Contact us netregs@sepa.org.uk.