Events and Blogs

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…

The Scottish Forum on Natural Capital and Scottish Natural Heritage have joined forces with business, education and the arts industry to offer young people the opportunity to share work inspired by Scotland’s nature.   The short film competition is seeking entries that combine passion and creative talent with the latest facts to make a powerful case for why businesses should…

The existing Natural Capital Asset Index (NCAI) helps us track broad-scale changes in the quantity and quality of habitats and has been adopted as an indicator within the National Performance Framework. It includes terrestrial and (some) coastal habitats, but the index development did not include marine assets (largely due to data limitations). Advances in marine data and health indicators for…

Today, the Scottish Government released the first set of Ecosystem Service Accounts for Scotland. These accounts, produced by the Office for National Statistics, provide the first comprehensive assessment of Scotland’s natural capital and includes information on 10 ecosystem services: Agricultural biomass  Fish capture Timber Water abstraction Mineral production Oil and gas production Renewable energy generation Carbon sequestration Air pollutant removal Recreation…