Events and Blogs

On the 23rd November 2017, Scottish Natural Heritage and the Scottish Forum on Natural Capital convened a high-level roundtable in Edinburgh to determine how to take forward the Scottish Government's commitments of protecting and rebuilding natural capital. Bringing together 18 public sector bodies in Scotland, including NHS – Health Scotland, Scottish Enterprise and Scottish Water, the discussion was the first…

What is biodiversity? Whilst often perceived as simply representing exotic and endangered species, biodiversity includes all of the life on Earth, in all of its forms – from bluebells to redwoods, molluscs to whales – and all its interactions. It is the interactions between biodiversity and non-living resources that generate most of the benefits that flow from natural capital. In…

The policy drivers for agriculture and land management within Scotland are changing, with a much greater focus on actively working with nature and developing a better appreciation of our dependencies on the natural world to promote a more sustainable future. Post-Brexit policy, while uncertain, is anticipated to have a greater focus on public payments for public goods, while improving the…

Scotland’s Natural Capital Asset Index: Tracking the national Index  Robert Kennedy famously said of GDP “it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile”. There has been a general consensus that a more comprehensive way to measure wellbeing needs to be found. A failing of GDP is its inability to measure the often free benefits provided by nature,…

Natural Capital assessments – which help to define the value of natural assets – are especially useful for individual farmers and landowners, a trial project has found. The trial applied the Natural Capital Protocol, co-developed by an international team of expert businesses and NGOs, to land-based businesses on two Moray estates run by Crown Estate Scotland as part of its…

Abstract Rewilding as a conservation strategy is gaining increasing scientific, political and public attention, yet empirical evaluations of its impacts remain scarce, especially with regards to ecosystem services. We provide evidence of the change in three ecosystem services (timber [provisioning], pollination [regulating], and aesthetics [cultural]) from up to 27 years of a moorland rewilding strategy in the Scottish Highlands using…

Last month on behalf of the Scottish Government, we at the Scottish Forum on Natural Capital organised a consultation to allow our members to feed into the Environment Strategy for Scotland. The session, which brought together over 20 representatives from business, science, academia and conservation, was held at Scotland’s Rural College in Edinburgh and was chaired by Ian Jardine, National…

City deals and City Region Deals are a major opportunity to look at investment decisions through a new lens, bringing greater social, environmental and economic benefits over the longer term. This report is an analysis of two proposals: a River Project aiming to put the river back at the heart of Stirling life, and a new city park. We hope that…

Natural capital has featured prominently in a report highlighting ten key outcomes to ensure a sustainable future for the rural economy in Scotland. Coordinated by the National Council of Rural Advisers (NCRA), an independent body providing advice and recommendations on rural policy to the Scottish Government, the report has been presented to the Scottish Government following one of the biggest…

Today, the Scottish Government released their new Economic Action Plan, which sets out a number of new and existing actions which they believe will “work together to build a strong, vibrant and diverse economy that promotes wellbeing and attracts investment.” Within this new plan, it is recognised that Scotland’s high-quality natural assets, such as water, soil and nature, “are the…