Introducing Know the Score.
Accounting for Nature is proud to launch our new brand campaign: Know the Score. A simple idea with a powerful message.
Nature underpins everything: our economies, our food systems, our water security, and our wellbeing. Yet unlike sport, where performance is measured in real time, nature is too often left without a clear, consistent and trusted scoreboard.
Without measurement, there is no shared understanding of condition. Without condition, there is no meaningful accountability. And without accountability, investment and decision-making risk being built on guesswork rather than evidence.
Know the Score challenges that gap.
It calls for a world where the state of nature is measured with the same clarity and discipline that we apply to performance in sport, so we can understand not just intention, but outcome.
From scoreboard to systems change.
In sport, the scoreboard does more than inform — it changes behaviour.
Teams adapt tactics. Coaches make decisions. Players respond to pressure. And fans stay engaged because they can see what’s happening.
The same principle applies to nature.
When we can clearly measure environmental condition and the state of nature:
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Investors can understand risk and return with greater confidence
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Governments can design more effective policies and track impact
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Landholders can demonstrate outcomes, not just activity
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Markets can reward real improvements in nature, not assumptions
- Businesses can account for nature on their balance sheet
Measurement doesn’t just describe nature, it helps shape how we value and manage it.
The role of technology and why it matters.
This campaign also reflects on the role of emerging technologies, including AI.
AI has been used as a creative tool to bring Know the Score to life, helping us tell this story in new, accessible and engaging ways at scale.
But the message is intentional: while technology can help us see more, explain more and communicate more effectively, it must never replace the reality of nature itself.
We do not want a future in which nature is only experienced through screens, models, or simulations. We want a future where nature is measured rigorously, understood clearly, and experienced directly, with data that reflects what is actually happening on the ground.
Why this campaign, why now?
Across finance, policy and industry, expectations are rising fast. Nature risk, biodiversity reporting and natural capital disclosure are moving from voluntary ambition to mainstream requirement.
In that context, clarity matters.
Know the Score is designed to cut through complexity with a simple proposition:
If you can’t measure nature, you can’t manage it — and you can’t invest in it with confidence.
There is no shortage of conversation about measuring nature. In fact, it has become one of the most active and contested areas in environmental policy, finance and science.
On one side, there is growing recognition that nature must be measured if it is to be properly managed, valued and integrated into decision-making. On the other, there remains persistent doubt, sometimes well-intentioned, sometimes resistant, about whether nature can be measured in a consistent, credible and comparable way at all.
This tension is not new. It has shaped decades of debate across science, policy and markets: what to measure, how to measure it, and whether it is even possible to reduce the complexity of ecosystems into meaningful, decision-useful information.
It is precisely this challenge that led to the development of the Accounting for Nature® Framework, originally established by the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists. The Wentworth Group brought together leading scientists and thinkers who were motivated by a simple but urgent question: how do we ensure environmental decisions are based on clear, transparent and comparable information about the condition of nature?
Their work helped establish a practical foundation for environmental accounting, one that focuses not on attempting to oversimplify nature, but on developing standardised, transparent methods that can describe its condition in a way that is useful for decision-making.
Accounting for Nature builds on this legacy.
It provides a structured approach to measuring environmental condition using scientifically robust, independently accredited methods. Importantly, it moves the conversation beyond whether nature can be measured, and towards how we can measure it consistently, transparently and at scale, so it can inform real-world decisions.
In many ways, this is where the conversation now stands.
The question is no longer only philosophical or theoretical. It is practical and urgent: without agreed ways of measuring nature, how do we manage risk, track outcomes, allocate capital, or assess progress over time?
Know the Score is designed to engage directly with this moment.
It acknowledges the complexity of nature, the history of scientific debate, and the importance of rigour. But it also challenges inertia, the idea that because something is difficult to measure perfectly, it should not be measured at all.
Instead, it advances a more constructive position: that through consistent frameworks, transparent methods and independent verification, we can build trusted environmental accounts that are good enough to guide better decisions, while continuing to improve over time.
In doing so, we move from debate to implementation and from uncertainty to accountability and trust.
What is an Environmental Account?
At the heart of the Accounting for Nature® Framework is the Environmental Account, and together with the Econd®, it creates what is best understood as a scoreboard for nature.
An Environmental Account is not a report or a narrative. It is a structured, independently verified measurement of the condition of a defined environmental asset such as vegetation, soil and sediment, fauna, water and ecosystems.
It works much like a performance record over time:
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A defined area and natural asset/s are identified
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An independently scientifically validated Accredited Method is applied to measure its condition
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A baseline “starting score” measurement of environmental condition is established
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The same Method is used repeatedly to measure and track change over time (minimum every 5 years)
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Results are independently verified and can also be audited to ensure consistency and credibility
This turns nature from something described in qualitative terms into something that can be consistently measured, compared and tracked, across places, time and management actions.
But the real power of the system comes from the Econd®.
The Econd® is a standardised index generated from Environmental Accounts that expresses the condition of nature in a single, comparable score from 0 -100. It enables different ecosystems, projects and regions to be understood through a common metric.
Put simply:
Together, they create a way to see whether nature is improving, stable or declining, clearly, transparently and consistently.
This is what makes comparison and accountability possible. Without a common score, nature remains fragmented across reports, indicators and assumptions. With it, we begin to see performance in a way that can inform decisions, direct investment and track real outcomes over time.
What is already happening under the framework?
This is not a future concept; it is already in practice.
Under the Accounting for Nature® Framework:
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Nearly 10 million hectares of land are now being measured, managed or reported using Environmental Accounts.
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Environmental Accounts are being applied across multiple biomes, land uses and sectors, including biodiversity restoration, regenerative agriculture, carbon projects, conservation and natural capital investment.
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Methods continue to be developed and accredited, expanding the range of environmental assets that can be consistently assessed.
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Certified Environmental Accounts are being used to support investment decisions, reporting requirements and landscape-scale management planning.
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A growing ecosystem of Accredited Experts and Auditors, landholders, organisations and partners is contributing to the application and evolution of the framework globally.
Together, this represents a growing shift from fragmented environmental reporting to a more structured, comparable and decision-ready system for understanding the condition of nature.
It is tested, it is real — and it is growing.
Know the Score is about accelerating that shift, and making the case that nature deserves nothing less than the same clarity, accountability and visibility we expect in every other system we rely on.
Join the play for nature.
This is just the beginning of the campaign, and we invite you to be part of it.
Watch, share and explore Know the Score:
Because when it comes to nature, it’s time we all know the score.
