The Capitals Approach

A capitals approach enables organisations to understand how their success is directly or indirectly underpinned by natural capital, social capital and human capital, empowering them to make decisions that offer the greatest value across all capitals.

The Protocol Framework covers 4 stages focused around the questions Why? What? How? and What Next?

1. Frame (Why?) Identify risks and opportunities for your business and stakeholders resulting from your relationships with the capitals and explore how an assessment would be relevant to your decision making.
2. Scope (What?) Identify the objective of your assessment and conduct a materiality process to select the most relevant impacts and dependencies from the perspective of both your business and stakeholders.
3. Measure & Value (How?) Use relevant approaches to measure and value the costs and benefits resulting from your material impacts and dependencies on the capitals.
4. Apply (What Next?) Interpret, validate and verify your assessment process and results and integrate them into existing business processes to inform decision-making.

Captials Coalition