About the Protocols

Capitals Coalition – Integrated Methodology

Integrated Decision-Making Framework

The Integrated Decision-Making Framework is the Capitals Coalition’s more recent development, combining the Natural Capital Protocol and the Social & Human Capital Protocol into a single integrated methodology. It adds a fourth capital – produced capital, encompassing the human-made assets and financial resources that organizations deploy – to create a complete, four-capital system. Where the individual Protocols address natural or social and human capital as distinct assessment domains, the Integrated Decision-Making Framework is built around the premise that the interactions between all four capitals are where the most consequential business risks and opportunities actually sit.

The Framework incorporates the Principles of Integrated Capitals Assessments, which the Coalition developed to guide organizations through multi-capital thinking in a structured and consistent way. It is designed for organizations ready to move beyond single-capital analysis – either because their material dependencies span multiple capital types, or because they want a holistic view of how their decisions create and erode value across the full system. The Framework does not require organizations to have completed Protocol-based assessments first, though the experience of doing so typically accelerates its application.

For organizations navigating nature-related financial disclosure requirements, supply chain sustainability mandates, or investor expectations around integrated value reporting, the Integrated Decision-Making Framework provides the most comprehensive analytical foundation currently available within the capitals approach.

Capitals Coalition Protocol

Natural Capital Protocol

The Natural Capital Protocol is an internationally standardized framework for identifying, measuring, and valuing an organization’s impacts and dependencies on natural capital – the stock of renewable and non-renewable natural resources, including ecosystems, species, water, land, minerals, and the services they provide. Developed collaboratively by 38 organizations and refined through a public consultation that drew over 3,200 responses, the Protocol has been in use since 2016 and adopted across industries and geographies worldwide.

The Protocol moves through four stages: Frame, Scope, Measure & Value, and Apply. The framing stage establishes the business case and decision context; scoping identifies which natural capital impacts and dependencies are material; measurement and valuation quantifies those impacts using qualitative, quantitative, or monetary approaches depending on the decision at hand; and the apply stage integrates results into business processes. The approach is iterative – organizations can begin with a limited scope and deepen the assessment over time as capacity and understanding develop.

In practice, the Protocol has been used to inform procurement strategy, identify supply chain risk, assess site-level environmental exposure, and support investment decision-making. The Biodiversity Guidance developed alongside the Protocol extends its application to biodiversity-specific assessment, particularly relevant for Canadian organizations in extractive, agricultural, and infrastructure sectors where direct nature dependencies are significant.

Capitals Coalition Protocol

Social & Human Capital Protocol

The Social & Human Capital Protocol gives organizations a structured methodology for measuring, valuing, and integrating their impacts and dependencies on social and human capital into existing business processes. Social capital encompasses the networks, shared norms, and relationships that enable communities and institutions to function. Human capital encompasses the knowledge, skills, competencies, and attributes that individuals bring to their work and to society. Together, these are the relational and capacitative foundations that financial capital alone cannot create or replace.

The Protocol was developed over four years with input from more than 50 businesses and a global public consultation. It follows the same four-stage structure as the Natural Capital Protocol – Frame, Scope, Measure & Value, Apply – and is applicable to organizations of all sizes and sectors. The framework is iterative by design: social and human capital assessments typically deepen in scope as organizations build familiarity with the methodology and confidence in their data.

Applications include supply chain social risk assessment, workforce wellbeing analysis, community impact evaluation, and informing decisions on sourcing, investment, and product design. For Canadian organizations with operations or supply chains that intersect with Indigenous and rural communities, the Protocol offers a structured basis for assessing and accounting for social dependencies and impacts that conventional financial reporting does not capture.

How the Three Tools Relate to Each Other

The Natural Capital Protocol and the Social & Human Capital Protocol are the foundational frameworks – entry points for organizations beginning to measure and account for non-financial capital. Each addresses a specific capital domain with its own established methodology, sector-specific supplements, and practitioner community. Organizations may start with one based on materiality: a mining company or agricultural producer may find natural capital the more pressing starting point; a professional services firm or financial institution may find social and human capital more immediately relevant to its operations.

The Integrated Decision-Making Framework is the evolution of both. It does not supersede the Protocols – organizations continue to use them for single-capital assessments – but it provides the architecture for integrated analysis across all four capitals simultaneously. The most substantive business decisions rarely involve only one form of capital: a procurement decision, an infrastructure investment, or a community engagement strategy each involves trade-offs between natural, social, human, and produced capital that only an integrated assessment can fully illuminate.

A practical path for most organizations is to begin with whichever Protocol is most material to their current decisions, build internal capacity and data, and progress toward integrated assessment as that foundation develops. CHC can assist at each stage of that journey, connecting organizations with the tools, training, and practitioner expertise appropriate to where they are.

Where to Start

All three frameworks are freely available from the Capitals Coalition under Creative Commons licences. The Coalition also offers training resources, including a free online course on the Coursera platform covering natural capital assessment fundamentals.

If you are uncertain which framework is the right starting point for your organization, or want guidance on how to scope an assessment within the Canadian regulatory and sectoral context, CHC is available to assist. We can also connect you with practitioners in our network who have applied these frameworks in relevant Canadian contexts. Contact us to find out more.