What is Natural Capital?
Natural Capital can be defined as the world’s stocks of natural assets which include geological resources, soil, air, water and all living things. It is from this natural capital that humans derive a wide range of essential services, often called ecosystem services, which make human life possible.
Obvious ecosystem services we derive from the sea include food as well as health and wellbeing benefits, but there are also many less visible ecosystem services. In the marine environment these include climate regulation and flood defences provided by natural structures such as kelp beds and blue carbon stored in marine habitats.
A rapidly growing number of business and political leaders are recognising that we rely on our marine natural capital to provide goods and services, which are vital to economic activity and human well-being. However, we are depleting this natural capital at an unprecedented rate. Scotland’s seas are under immense pressure from increasing use, climate change and biodiversity loss. By 2030, if we continue along our current path, we will demand twice as many resources as the planet is able to provide.
Assessing Marine Natural Capital
The Trust’s Oceans of Value project took an innovative approach to the challenge of capturing the range of values that are placed on the marine environment, focusing on the seas around Orkney. It compared two different methods, one of which was a Marine Natural Capital Assessment – the first of its kind to attempt to carry out a natural capital assessment of a marine region.
By mapping out the natural capital assets in Orkney’s marine environment, and identifying the ecosystem services they provide, it is possible to identify which assets are of most importance to the community, businesses and industries in Orkney. An assessment of the health of these assets and the threats they face also provides further key information for marine planners and decision makers.
Completed in October 2021, the Marine Natural Capital Assessment of the Orkney Marine Region found that:
- sustaining fish populations is a key ecosystem service provided by most marine habitats
- marine natural capital assessments can provide the framework for delivering key objectives of marine spatial plans (in this case Regional Marine Plans), but further investment in data collection and monitoring is required to fulfil this potential
- despite Orkney being a relatively well-studied marine area, there is a lack of suitable data available to inform natural capital assessments and develop clear, location-specific conclusions
Find out more
You can find out more about Marine Natural Capital by visiting The Marine Natural Capital Navigators who’s remit is to look at advancing marine natural capital and ecosystem service thinking, research and practical implementation in Scotland. The Marine Navigators hub is one of four hubs of the Scottish Forum of Natural Capital, which was founded in 2013 by the Scottish Wildlife Trust, Scotland’s 2020 Climate Group, the University of Edinburgh, the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Scotland, and the Institute of Directors Scotland as part of the inaugural World Forum on Natural Capital.
You can also find our Natural Capital policies by visiting our Policies and Positions Page