#naturalcapital

[seattleru]

Seattle once faced a choice: log a vast forest for quick cash or protect it forever for clean water. 🌲💧 Ordinary citizens chose the forest—and 130 years later, it’s still paying off. Discover how: https://hyperlocalnews.website/wiki_en/a-forest-that-earns-money-by-doing-nothing.html

[my-asianewstoday-blog]

Jacobs to Support National Ecosystem Survey Delivery for UK Government’s Natural Capital and Ecosystem Assessment http://dlvr.it/TR7YfB

[r-generation]

Rural Economies and Peatlands (1/3)

Over 100 people attended the 8th IUCN UK Peatland Programmes’ Nationwide Conference on the topic of ‘Peatland Connections: Building Prosperity’ between the 2nd and 4th of October 2018 in the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park of Scotland. The overarching aim of the Peatland Programme has been to promote the restoration of peatlands in the UK, while advocating for the multiple benefits they provide via partnerships, strong science, sound policy and effective practice. The conference this year focussed on the public benefits of peatlands, investigating and presenting how peatlands, which constitute almost 20% of land cover in Scotland and of which, approximately 50% are damaged, can support prosperous businesses and communities when in good condition. The conference presented peatlands and the work being done to restore them in the UK through the framing of natural capital — which is increasingly used in the context of discussing environmental management in the UK. Jonathan Hughes of the Peatland Programme drew immediate attention to the fact that investing in peatlands in Scotland at an adequate scale requires large injections of capital now in order to save money in the long-run by turning current and prospective natural capital liabilities into assets. Looking to the Loch Lomond & Trossachs National Park as an example, he highlighted the fact that 10 times more carbon is stored in its peat than forests, with peat conservation and restoration activities therefore providing substantial economic benefits through helping with the prevention of, and adaptation to, climate change. Francesca Osowska, the CEO of Scottish Natural Heritage — which is the statutory environmental management agency in Scotland — went on to introduce the Scottish National Peatland Plan and ‘peatland action’ initiative, which are helping realize the Scottish government’s aim as outlined in its Climate Change Plan of 2018 — for restoring 50,000 hectares of peatland by 2020, and 250,000 by 2030. To this end and since 2012, 15,000 hectares of peatland have been ‘set on their road to restoration’. More can be found on this initiative at www.nature.scot/peatlandaction.

Dieter Helm, professor of energy economics at the University of Oxford contributed to the discussion through fleshing out the concept of Natural Capital (NC). For Helm, NC is defined as what nature provides us for free, a planetary inheritance to which every generation should have a right. Rather than focussing on ecosystem services terminology which is often associated with the NC concept, Helm asks for the NC concept to be understood as relating to assets and opportunities in natural systems. Natural Capital can be subdivided into that which is non-renewable e.g. metals, and that which is renewable, e.g. forests. Renewable NC can acts as an asset in perpetuity, or until climatic and biophysical factors render them otherwise and they thus have the potential to provide many future benefits suffice that their consumption does not exceed rates of renewal. This perspective of nature as quantifiable assets within accounting frameworks grounded in quantified analysis (biophysical and economic) versus more nebulous concepts such as sustainability give a numerical basis for gauging progress in effectively investing in NC assets. Regarding how the economic benefits of peatlands are quantified, Hazel Tenbirth representing the Office for National Statistics highlighted that Gross Domestic Product as a metric for assessing the health of the UK’s economy gives only part of the picture given that it focusses only on flows and not stocks. The ONS have systematically expanded their work to account for the value of the UK’s natural capital stocks, measured in both non-monetary and monetary terms across a 100 year time-horizon. The methodology used for valuing these natural capital assets proceed by splitting the UK into its ecosystems and measuring the extent of that type (12% for peatlands), before categorizing this extent into different grades of condition. The ecosystem services thought to be derived from that ecosystem type e.g. hydrological celerity increases are then outlined and measured, before a monetary value is assigned to those services when accounting for demand-factors. Taken together, these stages underpin how the total economic value of NC in the UK is arrived at. 

Andrew Moxley went to explain that peatland restoration provides benefits to society which are mainly directly untraded in markets such as temperature regulation, and cultural values. Looking at the economic value for carbon sequestration services provided by restoring peatlands as one element of their total economic value, these were estimated to range between £90-210/ha/yr (up to £1350/ha), while when accounting for the ‘total’ benefits of restoring peatland, these were thought to be £127-414/ha/yr in Scotland and £152-411/ha/yr for the whole of the UK. Turning to the costs of peatland restoration, these varied according to factors including types of restoration undertaken and location of activities, but could be categorized into: upfront administrative costs for design; upfront capital costs for restoration undertakings such as grip blocking (ranging from £150-7000/ha across projects assessed); recurrent costs such as for repairs; and opportunity costs such as associated with losses in income from the next most valuable use of land. Accounting for both sides through benefit-cost analysis drawing on the analysis of benefits and costs, can help determine where the greatest return on investment with scarce financial resources might be had when investing in ecosystems and is a tool used extensively by the likes of the Adaptation sub-committee of the UK’s Climate Change Committee.

[kmjandal]

Relax time after full-packed seminar-workshop #PuertoPrincesa #Palawan #environmentalvaluation #naturalcapital (at The Legend Palawan)

[animalistauntamedblog]

The Brexit Effect- What next for Nature?

The Brexit Effect- What next for Nature?

“We’re calling on UK Governments to turn leaving the European Union into an opportunity to create a countryside richer in nature.” Martin Harper for the RSPB Earlier this year science proved, as it so often does, something we already instinctively knew: spending time in nature is good for our health, and for our happiness. The ’30 days of random wildness’ study conducted by Derby Uni and the…

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[sharonsrose13]

#Repost @conservationorg ・・・ What on Earth is 'natural capital'? We're looking to make sense of environmental jargon in an occasional explainer series we’re calling “What on Earth?” In this installment, we break down “natural capital,” a concept that could revolutionize the way nature is protected (link in bio). #whatonearth #naturalcapital #conservation #nature #science #water #guyana