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

The Scottish Government’s aspiration is to increase the contribution of natural capital to a broader range of economic and social benefits. This target is embedded in policies. However, the Dasgupta Report and other documents stress that humanity underestimates the value of nature leading to its ‘overconsumption’. Thus, an improved understanding of the mechanisms to capture the values of natural capital is needed, exemplifying the importance of natural capital in relation to climate change, spurring the provision of ecosystem services (e.g. of public goods) and/or enhancing the condition of ‘nature’ (e.g. through rewilding).

Project aim

Natural capital valuation can offer a basis for decision-making and monitoring the effects of policies, and land and resource management decisions. Therefore, this inter-transdisciplinary research was designed to answer the questions of:

• What are the gaps in current natural capital valuation?
• Which of the dimensions of value would it be helpful to consider?
• How could these values be captured, measured, valued to support more robust and end-user friendly participatory planning, knowledge transfer and decision-making systems?

About the project

We are working in a participatory environment where stakeholder engagement, brand-new technology, and advanced scientific methodology are brought together. We believe that the proposed integration of methods and their use of in a socially innovative milieu, with a framework and new knowledge to be co-constructed with end-users (along with other benefits) will enable:

• Wider incorporation of inputs from end-users into natural capital valuation (with added value of spatial analysis on factors, which support the interpretation of ecosystem services context in space, and of their changes through time).
• To encounter trade-offs among values held by different groups of stakeholders and different individuals.
• To consider other trade-offs, complexities and uncertainties that are not yet captured in decision-making.
• Offer more inclusive, comprehensive, and impartial insights into the social value of ecosystem services that humans derive from natural capital (e.g., of Scottish woodlands). We anticipate that widening of the scope of natural capital valuation by bringing in participatory approaches will create pathways to societal impacts by providing opportunities to embed natural capital thinking into real world situations.

Timeline of highlights

11 March 2024

Sam Poskitt, Mike Rivington, Simone Martino, Katy Joyce and others held a workshop for co-creating, with stakeholders, a new knowledge of natural capital valuation (JHI-D5-1), and of climate change risks and responses (JHI-D5-2). 

25 January 2024

The team, led by Prof Maria Nijnik and Dr Simone Martino, held a workshop at the Scotland ClimateXChange in Edinburgh to support natural capital (NC) based decision-making. The drivers, opportunities and risks, affecting the condition and value of NC were examined with stakeholders, along with innovative approaches (e.g. scenarios, frameworks, tools) to manage these. This project and the project on Climate change impacts on NC, led by Dr Mike Rivington, are supported by The Scottish Government under its Strategic Research Programme (2022-2027).

5 – 7 September 2022

Prof Maria Nijnik, PI of JHI-D5-1, participated in the IUFRO Conference on Managerial economics & accounting, held in Hamburg. It brought together 38 participants from 12 countries. Dr John A. Parrotta, President of the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO), in his welcome speech, pointed out a central role of Natural Capital (NC) Valuation and Accounting as a tool to ensure that the values and services are sustainably provided by ecosystems. 

The event promoted a dialogue between researchers, policymakers, citizens, and practitioners engaged in forestry and related fields under the bio-economy paradigm and the rural, environmental and climate policy and research agendas. 

Principle investigator