Environment Agency’s Natural Capital Register and Account Tool update
We integrated additional natural assets including soil, biodiversity, and green-blue spaces in urban areas, into the development of the natural capital register and account tool (NCRAT). The ability of NCRAT to assess and quantify these additional assets improves the tool's relevance in qualitatively valuing the three assets.
- Client: Environment Agency
- Location Online
- Services
Challenge
The Environment Agency developed a natural capital register and account tool (NCRAT), the first freely available tool, designed to assist the user in developing a natural capital account quickly and simply. The current version of the tool assesses several ecosystem services and benefits such as agriculture, water supply, renewable energy and hazard regulation.
However, the natural assets of soil, biodiversity and green-blue spaces in urban areas have not yet been accounted for. All three are integral to supporting our ecosystems and have essential benefits to our well-being.
Solution
To integrate these three assets into the existing NCRAT (v1.1) tool, we initially conducted a comprehensive literature review. The review enabled us to identify a long list of potential metrics and associated data sources for each asset type. During this process, several experts were consulted and interviewed to further refine the list of potential metrics. This engagement developed evaluation criteria, permitting a critical assessment of the chosen metrics and their suitability for the existing NCRAT tool. The final metrics determined to be integrated into the tool included soil, biodiversity, and green-blue spaces in urban areas.
Benefit
NCRAT’s ability to assess and quantify these additional assets improves the relevance of this tool to comprehensively value soil, biodiversity and green-blue space now qualitatively. Stakeholder engagement and input into the tool’s development has allowed the final integration to be aligned with industry needs as well as reflecting current scientific knowledge for each metric.
For more information about this project, please contact Steve Maslen.
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