ABSTRACT
A FUNDAMENTAL PREREQUISITE TO INTERNALIZING SUSTAINABILITY into corporate strategy is to transform relevant ecological and social data into a form both recognizable to and usable by senior corporate decision makers. As discussed in chapter 24, triple bottom line (TBL) accounting has become the gold standard of sustainability reporting, allowing stakeholders the ability to gauge the degree of corporate success in achieving the elusive goal of sustainability—at least in theory. The challenge is to transform the stand-alone reporting of environmental and social indicators into monetary values that can be unified with a corporation’s financial statements. This is a formidable task, as chapter 7 has outlined the conceptual complexities of monetizing just a few key environmental values, excluding a number of critical ecosystem services and social values. This chapter describes some recent advances in this endeavor and promise of future progress.
