Natural capital constitutes the living and non-living elements of nature. This includes our forests, croplands, moorlands, peatlands, rivers, oceans, geology, atmosphere, biodiversity and more. Natural assets generate ecosystem services that we derive benefit from. These include food production, recreation, climate regulation and natural flood management. Natural capital and the ecosystem service provision are influenced by human activity.
Nature markets are emerging as a way to fund nature restoration and management activities to protect, restore and enhance our natural capital. This includes generating ‘credits’ that can be sold to buyers looking to offset their environmental impact. The Woodland Carbon Code and Peatland Code are the two UK and Scottish Government-backed carbon codes at the moment, supporting woodland planting and regeneration and peatland restoration. The Scottish Government is currently developing the Ecosystem Restoration Code as a market mechanism to generate nature or biodiversity credits from other habitats. There are other metrics and standards in the pipeline, such as the Scottish Planning Biodiversity Metric, soil carbon standard and biochar standard.
There are increasing demands being placed on land managers to collect data on natural capital and carbon footprints. Sustainability reporting standards continue to evolve and will grow in influence in supply chains and the rural sector.
Developing an understanding of the natural capital a landholding supports is vital to aid in planning. Land managers are central to maintaining, protecting and enhancing natural capital in Scotland, whilst understanding these elements can also support in improving business resilience.
SLE provide expertise and support around issues such as nature markets, natural capital baselining, carbon reporting, Emissions Trading Schemes, carbon codes, private and blended finance and community engagement in nature market projects. Members can find relevant resources in the Document Library, by filtering the ‘Our Work Category’ to Natural Capital (you will need to log in to your SLE account on the website for access).