Bringing in participatory approaches to widen the scope of natural capital valuation

Challenges

The Scottish Government (SG) wants to increase the use of natural capital (NC) to bring more economic and social benefits. This goal is included in policies like the Land Use Strategy (2021) and Scotland's Forestry Strategy (2019). Climate change and biodiversity crises are leading to changes in economic priorities, with NC at the centre of a green recovery. The Dasgupta Report stated there is a lack of understanding of the value of nature, causing overuse of natural resources. The report suggests using NC accounting to create a more accurate measure of economic progress, one that takes into account the benefits of investing in natural assets.

Scotland is also putting a lot of focus on conservation finance, including the goal to invest £1 billion in nature-based solutions. This is part of the plan to reduce carbon emissions, improve resilience to climate change, and bring economic and social benefits to people and businesses. SG's policies aim to build strong communities, fight social exclusion, and promote healthy lifestyles, and NC valuation can help make decisions about resource use and management.

NC accounting provides valuable information for decision making and policy appraisal. It can estimate the contribution of ecosystem services (ES) to income and well-being, provide evidence of the benefits of ES, and guide decisions about payments for ES. Valuation can also help resolve conflicts between different interests and guide decisions to prevent damages that harm society.

Scotland has a variety of NC measurement tools and programs, including Scottish NC Accounts and the Asset Index, which provide a high-level view of the value and state of NC. The NC Pilot Program is a series of projects to test NC accounting methods and approaches to inform SG's policies. The Regional Land Use Partnerships, which involve government, communities, landowners, and other stakeholders, aim to facilitate NC-led collaborations at the regional level. However, NC approaches can face challenges from conflicting values among different groups of stakeholders. Currently, NC is seen as the value of the expected future flows of ES, considering the history of NC use or extraction, which can sometimes lead to conflicts between policies targeting different ES.

Questions

Solutions

This project aims to advance NC research methods by making them more relevant and accessible to different audiences and improving their usefulness in policy analysis and decision-making.

Knowledge appraisal

This project is reviewing existing methods in use and application of NC valuation to explore knowledge gaps and identify opportunities for going beyond the state-of-the-art. Primary data is collected through interviews and stakeholder engagement, and empirical evidence is obtained from the analysis and synthesis of information derived from a literature survey comprising policy documents, peer-reviewed publications, reports of relevant organizations, projects, and programmes, and selected grey literature. We are prioritising recent knowledge gained in Scotland.

Conceptual framework and innovative toolset 

We are co-designing a holistic, end-user-relevant framework for capturing systems’ complexities and interconnections. The framework is connecting NC to ecosystems’ condition and extent accounts and improves our understanding of dependencies between the condition and characteristics of natural assets and ES. Our work aligns with the NC protocol approach to help decision-makers in making more informed decisions. It aims to reveal the complex and dynamic relationships among stakeholders, human-environmental relationships, and those between NC and the ES provided.

Effective NC valuation would also require expert facilitation and appropriate information technology to capture and communicate results. Thus, we are developing an innovative valuation toolset of mixed methods. Also, digital methods are being refined and widely used to facilitate participation, necessary for data collection, policy review, and building scenarios encompassing a range of values of NC and ES.

Stakeholder engagement and expert consultation 

We are coordinating a participatory platform which is playing a key role in the project activities. The multi-actor platform is being used to:

• A better understanding of experts’ and stakeholders’ attitudes and perceptions of NC valuation
• Identify and explore knowledge gaps
• Establish the appropriate dimensions of value

We are co-producing a tool kit of engagement methods and approaches, including novel visual resources for GIS and spatial representation and NC apps and data portals. This includes developing interactive 3D models and carrying out research on the visualisation of data representing NC, which can be used in engagement and dissemination with policymakers, stakeholders, and the public. Among the tools for integration in the toolset are those enabling understanding of the ecosystem’s location and appearance, and reflecting on its size, extent, condition, and other characteristics. Thus, we are providing more inclusive, comprehensive, and impartial insights into the benefits that humans derive from ecosystems to better capture the socio-economic value of stocks and flows of ES.

Testing the framework and approaches developed in living labs

We are testing and applying a conceptual framework and innovative toolset for valuing NC. Two Scenarios are being developed to quantify and define the relations between ES and NC in two case studies:

• Ecosystem assets of woodlands (based on a whole-systems approach to capturing various interactions and distribution of benefits/ disbenefits)
• The effect of climate change (by considering wildfire risk).

Policy and practice implications

We are translating research outputs and findings into policy and practice guidelines. Our focus is on improving the environmental, socio-economic, and cultural understanding of the values of treescapes to inform decision-making on the expansion of woodlands, or it could be on helping to avoid and manage potential conflicts and build a common culture of risk prevention and preparedness. Scientific research underpinned by two workshops with relevant stakeholders is being used to co-create a set of recommendations on the different policy scenarios and build trust in the scenario model results that will inform the evaluation of policy options.