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
February 2025: Ms Joyce and Dr Poskitt presented at the Ecosystem and Land Use Stakeholder Engagement Group, Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, the development of a toolkit of participatory approaches for the valuation of natural capital to inform planning and decision making
September 2024: The team published a paper that identifies: 1) the lack of a holistic understanding of forest multifunctionality; 2) the absence of a framework for operationalizing sustainability of socio-ecological systems; 3) the gaps in valuing of biodiversity, landscapes, and cultural heritage; 4) how to facilitate the uptake of nature-based solutions, and sustained delivery of ecosystem services.
August 2024: Prof Nijnik highlighted the project aim and the importance of participatory valuation for decision making to end-users and forest practitioners in the Trees magazine.
July 2024: The team presented the valuation framework D2.1 to the Scottish Government policy team in a webinar organised by the Rural and Environmental Science and Analytical Services (RESAS).
June 2024: Prof Nijnik, Ms Joyce, Dr Martino, and Dr Wang participated to the IUFRO Congress 2024 to deliver 9 presentations and lead a panel discussion in: natural capital valuation, and operationalisation of natural capital via social innovation.
April 2024: The research team developed a new analytical framework that integrates participatory approaches into natural capital valuation to capture human-nature relationships beyond utilitarian values. A strategy addressing biophysical, economic values, and socio-cultural aspects is proposed by combining planning scenarios and visual aid participatory approaches (GIS and 3D reality). Deliverable D2.1
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: Dr Samuel Poskitt led a workshop at the Scotland ClimateXChange in Edinburgh to support natural capital-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 deal with NC values. The necessity of a more diverse range of values associated with nature is explained by Samuel Poskitt in the blog “Why community values are essential to nature”.
Principle investigator
Team members
This project is supported by the Rural and Environment Science and Analytical Services Division of the Scottish Government through its Strategic Research Programme (2022-2027).
It is project JHI-D5-1 in the Natural Resources theme
