Synthesis of natural capital and valuation outcomes

Challenges

Natural capital refers to the biotic and abiotic assets that support ecosystem process and final ecosystem services providing benefits to people. These assets are spread over multiple habitat and land use types and are subject to a wide range of policy and management drivers. This includes their place within relevant research taking place in the land use, outdoors and greenspace, air quality, water, soil and Biodiversity topic areas. The natural capital implications of that research such as its role in informing assessments of national performance including the natural capital accounts and the Natural Capital Asset Index may not be fully established. Consequently, there is a role for a stock taking exercise within the wider Scottish Government funded research that will bring together the emerging results from those topics to determine where they can inform natural capital assessments and metrics. There is also ongoing initiatives and research, including by agencies and other stakeholder groups, both in Scotland and elsewhere in the UK and Europe that may be of direct relevance.

A variety of natural capital related research is being undertaken throughout the Strategic Research Programme. Suitability of metrics and indicators that are developed needs to be assessed from a natural capital perspective. Gaps may remain with respect to natural capital valuation. Natural capital and land use modelling research will indicate future trends, risks and opportunities with respect to natural capital.

The key drivers of this project are:

• A variety of natural capital related research is being undertaken throughout the Strategic Research Programme.
• Suitability of metrics and indicators that are developed needs to be assessed from a natural capital perspective.
• Gaps may remain with respect to natural capital valuation.
• Natural capital and land use modelling research will indicate future trends, risks and opportunities with respect to natural capital.

Questions

Solutions

This project is collating and synthesising emerging knowledge on natural capital from wider research, identifying and applying appropriate valuation approaches for uses including natural capital accounting, and providing analysis of future trends based on natural capital and land use modelling. This includes evaluating the potential to use emerging metrics and indicators for a range of applications, for example:

• Natural Capital Accounting
• Natural Capital Asset Index
• Land use decision making including Regional Land Use Partnerships
• Land manager decision making and monitoring including potential use in future support schemes
• Nature capital investment mechanisms

Synthesis of emerging natural capital outcomes

To synthesise emerging natural capital outcomes, we are surveying outputs from across wider research to identify new metrics and indicators of natural capital. We are evaluating for use in different contexts with the assessment criteria being developed based on suitability for a range of end-users.

Valuation of natural capital synthesis and gaps

We are determining where values, both monetary and non-monetary, for natural capital assets or associated ecosystem services are emerging. Our analysis is evaluating the suitability of the values for different purposes such as natural capital accounting or to guide investment in natural capital. The assessment is further acting as a gap analysis to determine where additional research is required to estimate values, to match with metrics or indicators. We then propose to undertake primary valuation studies to address remaining gaps.

Evaluation of future natural capital risks and opportunities

We are considering outcomes from natural capital and land use to identify future scenarios of land use and opportunities and risks with respect to natural capital. These are being applied to the emerging metrics and indicators and associated values to identify possible future pathways for natural capital and ecosystem services. This is informing future policy needs and follow-on research requirements. For natural capital assessment tool such as natural capital accounts, a better understanding of future trends is useful when calculating asset values (the net present value of future ecosystem service flows). This is informing a better understanding of the sustainability of natural capital asset use.