We are taking our partnership with WBCSD further and collaborating on, not just the Natural Capital Protocol to value the impacts and dependancies of our companies on nature but also to develop a Social Capital Protocol (SCP), which values the impacts and dependancies of our companies on the societies which they operate in.

The purpose of the SCP, similarly to the NCP, is to make a global standard from the many fragmented approaches to measuring social capital. A standard protocol will help businesses measure their true impact, provide integrated risk assessment and better performance management and decision-making.

Building on the lessons being learnt from the NCP, a group of partners (many of whom are also working on the NCP project) will address valuing social capital, and pioneering companies will continue to invest and pilot a range of different techniques. To ensure the successful adoption alignment of the two protocols (Social and Natural) will be key.

One of the SCP team’s major challenges will be to look at the differences and similarities between the NCP and the SCP and how to position these new metrics to be best used by our companies, consumers, investors, government regulators and civil society. The complexity and overlapping nature of these two protocols makes a collaborative, multi-stakeholder approach all the more important.