Accounting for Biodiversity, Ecosystems, and Species: Impacts, Dependencies, and the State of Nature

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Introduction

Biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse are among the greatest challenges of our time. Investors are recognising nature risk in their portfolios, and nature-related issues are increasingly acknowledged as material to the future financial prospects of businesses and financial institutions (TNFD, 2025). As a result, a significant increase in the quantity and quality of nature and biodiversity information, especially organisations’ dependencies, is required urgently to satisfy the decision-making needs of investors and other stakeholders. Similarly, information and communication regarding organisations’ impacts on nature are necessary for accountability purposes. Understanding the relationship between organisations, biodiversity, and ecosystems is a crucial issue for addressing biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse and, ultimately, unlocking accounting potential to shape a better world (Carnegie et al., 2024). Such a relationship is triadic since it is composed of three main building blocks: impacts, dependencies, and the state of nature (Figure 1).

Figure 1 - The business and biodiversity triad

Source: adapted from Cinquini et al. (2025)

Accounting for impacts on biodiversity and ecosystems implies understanding the direct and indirect, positive and negative effect the organisation has on the five main impact drivers: over-exploitation of natural resources, pollution, introduction of invasive alien species, sea/land use change, and contribution to climate change. Accounting for these impacts sits within what is commonly known as environmental accounting. Environmental accounting involves the measurement and reporting of (generally negative) externalities of economic activities and is, therefore, an extension of traditional accounting to incorporate issues that would otherwise remain outside the accountability of economic activities (Freeman & Groom, 2013; Atkins et al., 2023). Carbon accounting and water accounting are examples of how to account for impacts, as well as the application of full cost accounting. Extinction accounting also falls into accounting for impacts since it calls organisations to account for species extinctions and demands accountability through extinction prevention, through transparent, science-aligned strategies (Atkins & Maroun, 2018; Pujiningsih & Utami, 2024). Extinction accounting calls organisations to accept moral responsibility for biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse (Gray & Milne, 2018; McBride et al., 2023).

Accounting for dependencies from biodiversity and ecosystems means understanding which ecosystem services an organisation relies on and what would happen if said ecosystem service deteriorates or ceases to exist. Organisations receive "services" from biodiversity and ecosystems such as the service of supplying raw materials, fertile land, pleasant scenery, and clean air therefore creating "dependencies" (Carvalho et al., 2022; Sun et al., 2022). As a result, organisational risk management should consider the operative, economic, and financial effects of dependencies (and their potential discontinuity) and prepare strategies and contingency plans should the risk materialize. A similar reasoning applies to opportunities. In fact, ecosystem services may create opportunities for organisations willing to exploit the untapped potential of ecosystem services as sources of innovation, substitute products, and nature-based business models.

Last, accounting for the state of nature implies measuring the health and value of ecosystems and species. There is a growing call for organisations to account for those bio-physical aspects under their direct observation, if not control. Ecosystem extent, ecosystem integrity, habitat fragmentation, and species count are example of information an organisation might be asked to account and report on. Moreover, how to value natural assets and their ability to provide services is piquing the interest of accounting researchers worldwide (Horner & Davidson, 2021). The natural capital accounting movement and the UN (2021) System of Environmental-Economic Accounting – Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EA), for example, provide organisations with frameworks dedicated to measuring and value natural stocks and flows.

This Call for Papers for Meditari Accountancy Research invites contributions that push the boundaries of accounting scholarship to engage with the complexities of biodiversity, ecosystems and species. We seek normative, interpretive and critical research to uncover what organisations are doing and should be doing to address the global biodiversity crisis. Moreover, research adopting qualitative, interventionist, and mixed methods approaches may help to glean interesting insights on how organisations are dealing with an emerging yet still novel topic. Last, we encourage the development of interdisciplinary research that crosses boundaries of traditional accounting research and incorporates knowledge coming from the natural sciences such as biology, agroecology, conservation science, and genetics. Even though research on biodiversity and ecosystem accounting is progressing, it remains primarily focused on external reporting (Blanco-Zaitegi et al., 2022; Solimene et al., 2024) – a trend that is characterizing the overall sustainability accounting field (Adams, 2002; Burritt & Schaltegger, 2010; Dumay et al., 2018; Pigatto et al., 2022; Vinnari & Laine, 2013). Therefore, many issues pertaining to biodiversity and ecosystem accounting remain unaddressed.

List of Topic Areas

• Accounting for the value(s) of biodiversity and ecosystems;
• Management control systems to account for impacts, dependencies, and the state of nature;
• Reporting on dependencies and state of nature;
• Accounting for dependencies and nature-related risks;
• Consequences of the application of different types of materiality (impact, financial, double) on biodiversity and ecosystems;
• Linkages between environmental accounting (accounting for impacts) and biodiversity and ecosystem accounting;
• Adoption of tools, frameworks, and standards for biodiversity and ecosystem accounting and their consequences for organisations and for nature;
• Links between the extinction accounting framework and accounting for dependencies;
• Accounting for biodiversity and ecosystem and the role of interdisciplinary knowledge exchange;
• Interdisciplinary knowledge exchange with accountants to account for and measure bio-physical elements;
• Species accounting: accounting for flora and fauna.

Guest Editors 

Giacomo Pigatto, Institute of Management, Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies (Italy), giacomo.pigatto@santannapisa.it

Jill Atkins, Cardiff University (UK), AtkinsJ10@cardiff.ac.uk

Lino Cinquini, Institute of Management, Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies (Italy), lino.cinquini@santannapisa.it

John Dumay, Macquarie University (Australia), john.dumay@mq.edu.au

Andrea Tenucci, Institute of Management, Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies (Italy), andrea.tenucci@santannapisa.it

Submissions Information

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Author Guidelines

Authors should select (from the drop-down menu) the special issue title at the appropriate step in the submission process, i.e. in response to “Please select the issue you are submitting to”. Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication anywhere else, while under review for this journal.

Special Issue Workshops

To help authors develop their manuscripts for submission, two Workshops linked to this special issue will be held in 2026:

• EEEAGER Workshop, Cardiff, 29 June – 1 July 2026 (https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/research/explore/research-units/environmental…)
• Meditari Accountancy Research Conference, Leeds, September 2026

Further information will be uploaded on how to participate in the Workshops.

Please note: papers’ presentation at the Workshop is not a prerequisite for submission, nor does it guarantee acceptance into the Special Issue.

Key Deadlines

Opening date for manuscripts submissions: 1st October 2026

Closing date for manuscripts submission: 30th November 2026