This week
The Society launches: what you asked for
The Society of Natural Capital Accounting (SoNCA) was launched on Tuesday 18 August 2026. One hundred and twenty four people registered, from Australia and from well beyond it. If you missed it you can watch it online or look at the slides.
The most useful part of the hour was not on the slides. We put four questions to the audience at the start, and there was much chat in the rest of the session. The one we cared about most was the third: what is the one thing you want from a professional society that you cannot get today?
The answers converged. People want a central platform to share experience, and not only the successes but the problems and how those problems were solved. They want access to a community of practice, and a view of what is happening in research, and in government and industry take-up. They want to see how Australia and the rest of the world understand, implement and expand on the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA), across both the SEEA Ecosystem Accounting and the SEEA Central Framework. Several raised comparability directly: how other people have handled the same awkward variable, and whether the answers are similar. Measurement challenges came up repeatedly, as did the continuing work of refining indicators. Underneath nearly all of it was the same thing: sharing good practice, connecting with others doing this work, and learning from experience that is currently locked inside the organisation that produced it. This is an excellent starting point for a work programme. The strong interest in a conference, tentatively Canberra in February 2027, was heartening, and if you would like to be involved in its planning, please let us know.
Twenty five registrants offered to present in the online seminar programme, which gives us a speaker list before we have even set the calendar. On working groups, the first candidate is the treatment of water in large artificial reservoirs as a produced asset, and the valuation of water resources in the SEEA Central Framework. Let us know if you would like to take part. Tell us too if you would like to lead a working group, or if there is a topic you think a group should be formed to address.
Membership opens shortly. Foundation membership is $180, with a concession rate of $90 that covers students, and a 10 per cent discount for anyone joining before 30 September. Sadly, the bank account is not yet open, so there is no payment link on the website now. As soon as it is open, we will put the link there and email everyone who asked us to. Foundation members are recorded as founders, shape the work programme and the working groups, and may vote and stand for election at the first annual general meeting.
The date and the form of that first annual general meeting are not yet settled. It may sit alongside the conference, or be held online later in the year, which would allow more members to take part. If you are watching the recording rather than the session, the four questions are still open. Send your answers to inquiries@naturalcapitalaccounting.org.
