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Monetary impact valuation for sustainable business

Businesses increasingly experiment with monetary impact valuation to assess their sustainability impacts, raising both promise and concern. We propose a scientific approach — grounded in eight principles — to ensure valuation serves sustainability rather than distorts it.

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Fig. 1: Eight guiding principles for sound and scientific monetary impact valuation.

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L.M.E.-S. wrote the initial draft of the comment. All co-authors contributed to revising and editing the manuscript. L.M.E.-S. consolidated the feedback from all authors throughout the drafting and revision process.

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Correspondence to Laura Marie Edinger-Schons.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Sustainability thanks Sylvain Maechler and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Edinger-Schons, L.M., Stroehle, J., Gümüsay, A.A. et al. Monetary impact valuation for sustainable business. Nat Sustain (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-025-01630-9

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