​​THE Woodland Environmental Fund (WEF) aims to help create business value from restoring Ireland’s native woodlands, with a briefing event planned for Dublin's Science Gallery in November.

The WEF is a platform for Government, the business community and landowners to work together to help meet planting targets set out in the Climate Action Plan 2019. An Post is the first organisation to commit to the WEF programme, supporting a new native woodland in Galway, working with Natural Capital Partners - a global leader in financing climate solutions through collaboration with business – and with the Department of Agriculture, Food & the Marine (DAFM). 

If a business would like to learn more about the WEF, a breakfast briefing event is being held at Trinity College Dublin in November. 

Where: The Science Gallery, Trinity College Dublin.
When: 8am - 9:45am, November 28th, 2019.

Under WEF, businesses can be associated with individual native woodlands and use the environmental benefits linked to these forests to demonstrate that they are meeting their responsibilities to the local environment and community. This ties in with DAFM’s existing afforestation scheme which covers 100% of the cost of establishing native woodlands and also pays an annual premium to the landowner per hectare for a 15-year period. The WEF includes an additional once-off top-up payment per hectare financed by the business to the landowner, and the business can report the resulting estimated carbon emission reductions against its footprint. 

RSVP to WEF@agriculture.gov.ie by Friday, 15th November 2019. For queries on this event please contact Karl Coggins at karl.coggins@agriculture.gov.ie or learn more about the WEF initiative at Woodland Environmental Fund.

THE European Commission has published two guidance documents on working with nature to resolve urgent societal challenges and implementing the Commission’s action plan for nature, people and the economy.

These new tools are intended to help planners, policymakers and businesses solve socio-economic challenges, while also protecting and restoring Europe's nature.

The EU Guidance document on 'integrating ecosystems and their services in decision-making' (part 1, part 2, part 3) highlights the range of benefits that flow from nature, and ways to take better account of these benefits in policy, planning and business investment decisions. There is a section relevant to Natural Capital and business in particular - see Chapter 6 in Part 2, P95.
 
Also the EU Guidance document on strategic EU level green and blue infrastructure defines criteria, and available technical and financial support instruments that can help planners to integrate natural landscape features into strategic "green and blue infrastructure".

These new guidance documents should serve as an important reference point to developing future policy initiatives. See https://ec.europa.eu/info/news/working-nature-resolve-urgent-societal-challenges-2019-sep-03_en.

​Policy Implications 
There are often calls for a curtailment of economic growth to “save the environment” - our results reinforce the suggestion that what matters is not economic growth per se but the way economic growth is secured. In the Irish case, it appears that total pollution damages were declining substantially while rapid levels of economic growth were secured. Our results demonstrate the potentially large benefits attainable from pollution reductions (Fig. 2) and provide a reminder that a system of regulations prioritising one particular problem, such as carbon dioxide emissions, at the expense of other damaging local air pollutants, may result in misguided public policy. The measurement of genuine savings provides a valuable framework for aggregate assessments where such trade-offs are involved.

In terms of sustainability assessments, governments and statistical agencies should be cognisant of the theoretical literature suggesting measuring GS should be the focus for the economic component of a wider sustainability analysis. The European Union currently monitors progress towards sustainable development with a dashboard of 100 indicators split between economic, social and environment, based on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. These individual indicators are clearly important but fail to provide any clear information to aid in the determination of whether or not the EU, or any individual member state, is on an unsustainable economic development path.

Fig. 2: Breakdown of total pollution damages​

INCASE postdoc and ecologist, Dr Catherine Farrell, has spent the summer reading up on natural capital accounting, national accounts and GDP. Here, she summarises her top three insights as she prepares to draft the literature review for the first phase of the INCASE research project.

I’ve been waxing lyrical about natural capital for years now, ever since myself and a few wild cards decided to grasp the thorny bramble and introduce it to the Irish community with 'Ireland's Hidden Wealth', the country's first natural capital conference, which was held at the National Botanic Gardens back in 2014.

It all seemed so simple – we rely on nature for our mere existence, therefore we should recognise that very fate in some way or form, and bring it to the fore of conversations about prosperity, well-being, etc. Essentially bring it into the boardrooms and the arenas of the mainly suited folk who make decisions. Simples? Surely?

So, having brushed the bog from my boots, I decided to not only grasp the thorny bramble but to meander through the branches and figure it out for myself. I started working on the INCASE project (a great multi-disciplinary team, by the way) on a rainy day in June 2019, and since then I’ve kept my head down and read, A LOT.

My brain is a bit tired and I seem to dream in ecosystem services and utopian discussions about wise land-use, but I've tried to keep it simple. There will be considerably more detail in the literature review (available on this website in a few months), but for now here are my top three takeaways:

1. GDP: Do we really rely on this as a measure (albeit a proxy) of well-being? GDP measures the flow of money in the economy. We could pollute our land and waters until the cows come home (indeed, they play a part in this too) and we would still have a ‘good’ GDP. Even worse, spending money to clean up pollution would also contribute to better GDP performance. For those who already know this, bear with me. There are millions who need to know, and others who need to be reminded. So, what do we do? The INCASE project will explore how natural capital accounting can bring ecosystems and habitats into the picture and Ireland's Central Statistics Office is also working on environmental accounts to inform National Accounts, so bear with us.

2. Data: We’ve got a lot, in different places. To carry out a decent Natural Capital Accounting (NCA) exercise, you need as much spatial data – that means maps of rivers, habitats, land-use, geology, aquifers – as you can get your hands on. The good news is we have bucketloads – the Environmental Protection Agency, Geological Survey Ireland, Ordnance Survey Ireland, Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, National Parks and Wildlife Service and Teagasc have lots. And I have the suspicion that we would all like to use that data for better (dare I say wise?) decision making around land/marine use. Bringing it all to one place and systematising the data in a way that makes it useful for everyone is one of the main tasks for INCASE. Watch this space.
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3. Natural Capital Accounting: It's complex, but we must learn by doing. The more I read, the more I realise that NCA is underway in some shape or form all over the world. Australia has been working on this for decades, the UN Statistics Division is leading the global community, Eurostat and other EU agencies are piloting Union-level accounting, and various Member States are working to develop approaches that suit their own unique country condition. While Ireland dipped a toe in MAES (Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystem Services) back in 2016, we’re lagging a bit in bringing NCA to fruition (despite it being an action in our current National Biodiversity Action Plan). It's time for action, and learning. For sure we’ll break a few eggs on the way, but as Carl Obst reminded us (Carl is one of the main authors of the UN NCA system, SEEA, and one of our project team), “There is nothing so great as an idea whose time has come”. Okay, Victor Hugo said it first, but it fits.

This blog was originally published on the INCASE website - check the site for more information and follow INCASE on Twitter @IncaseProject

An independent global review, the first on biodiversity to be led by an economics and finance-related government department, is being headed by Cambridge University's Professor Partha Dasgupta, with the consultation period running until November 6th, the UK Treasury has announced.

The review will report ahead of the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in China in October 2020. The findings will help shape the international response to biodiversity loss, including the successors to the Aichi Biodiversity Targets. 

The Dasgupta Review also aims to inform global action to deliver the Sustainable Development Goals and its primary audience is economic and finance policy and decision makers who significantly influence the response to biodiversity loss.

The review has been asked to examine the evidence on:

• How biodiversity supports sustainable economic growth;
• The implications of further biodiversity loss for the prospects for economic growth over the coming decades, accounting for the interaction with other aspects of environmental degradation, including climate change;
• The impact, effectiveness and efficiency of existing national and international actions and arrangements to limit and reverse the loss of biodiversity and their impact on economic growth.

Based on this evidence, the review will then provide an assessment of:

• A range of scenarios for enhancing global biodiversity compared with business as usual, focusing on the medium to long-term perspective and the relationship with economic growth; 
• The range of best practices, initiatives and interventions for industry, communities, individuals and governments that can simultaneously achieve the goals of enhancing biodiversity and delivering sustainable economic growth. This will draw out implications for the timescales for action and the range of scenarios above. It will recognise the interactions with climate change mitigation and adaptation needs and opportunities.

The Dasgupta Review will be based on a thorough consideration of robust, relevant, up-to-date evidence, including the existing work of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB).

If you have specific expertise and evidence to share, go to gov.uk for details.

THE draft agenda for the European Business and Nature Summit - taking place in Madrid in November - has been released and features a number of sessions dealing with the Natural Capital approach, with particular focus on how various bodies can connect and work together in the field.

The summit will highlight examples of best practices, tools and approaches to deliver a positive business impact on biodiversity and enhance the engagement of governments, businesses and financial institutions on biodiversity and natural capital.

Where:  7-8 November,  2019
When:  CaixaForum, Madrid, Spain
Host organisation: European Business and Biodiversity Platform, Ecoacsa, Fundación Empresa y Clima and Fundación Biodiversidad from Ministry for Ecological Transition – through Spanish Business and Biodiversity Initiative (IEEB) – and  Ministry of the Environment of Finland.

The Agenda includes a session on Accounting for Nature, with an update on the work of the EU B@B Platform, UNEP-WCMC and others on aligning biodiversity and natural capital accounting approaches. There will also be a discussion on 'Building a bridge between Natural Capital approaches' which will explore the links between corporate and government experiences, show the benefits of working collaboratively and discuss how to connect to boost their use across sectors in a more efficient and beneficial way. It will bring in experiences from the NCC´s Combining Forces Project and the UNSDs evaluation and discussion of the United Nations System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (UN SEEA) framework. 

Registration is due to open soon. See: http://ec.europa.eu/environment/biodiversity/business/annual-conference/annual-conference-2019/index_en.htm

View the draft agenda at the link below:
 https://ec.europa.eu/environment/biodiversity/business/assets/pdf/EBNS_Agenda_for_speakers.pdf

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The Natural Capital Initiative’s 10th anniversary summit entitled 'Valuing Our Life Support Systems' -#NCI2019 - offered an independent platform for people from diverse sectors and disciplines to come together to discuss and debate innovative natural capital solutions, building on two influential summits in 2014 and 2009, which helped to shape natural capital thinking in the UK. 

Irish Forum on Natural Capital Steering Committee member ORLAITH DELARGY was in attendance for Day 1 at The Crystal in London. Here is her summary of the day’s discussions...

DECLAN LITTLE, Project Manager for Woodlands of Ireland, writes about the recent Payments for Ecosystem Services - Forests for Water meeting in Killarney, Co Kerry, and explains how COST Actions are using woodland creation to protect European bodies of water.

IN recent years, Europe has witnessed a growing interest in the use of native woodland to protect and enhance water quality. The Payments for Ecosystems Services - Forests for Water (PESFOR-W) meeting, which took place in Killarney, Co Kerry, on June 4-6, 2019, is one of numerous meetings being held throughout the EU over a four-year period, involving delegates from 31 European countries. 

The focus is the delivery of practical woodland measures to protect water quality and their implementation via ecosystem service payments. There are four working groups with clearly defined objectives and final reports and outcomes will be published next year. PESFOR-W is one of many 'actions' funded under COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology), a funding organisation for research and innovation networks. These are designed to connect research initiatives across Europe and beyond and enable researchers and innovators to grow their ideas in numerous science and technology fields by sharing them with their peers.

Woodlands which have been established and managed to protect and enhance water quality are strategically located in a sensitive manner with minimal inputs. The ecosystem services are clear - for example, the Irish Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) Woodland for Water document (2018) sets out a model involving new native woodland planted under the Native Woodland Establishment Scheme, delivering:

• reduction in sediment mobilisation and runoff into watercourses
• interception of nutrient runoff into watercourses
• bank stabilisation
• food input into the aquatic ecosystem
• shading / cooling
• regulation of floodwater
• riparian restoration
  
  

In Ireland, grant aid for afforestation is available under the Forestry Programme 2014-2020 to encourage and enable farmers and landowners to opt for the Native Woodland Scheme to deliver these water-related benefits. Premium payments to landowners may be topped up from the Woodland Environmental Fund (WEF), as corporates and other business interests contribute to meet Corporate and Social Responsibility (CSR) objectives. But are there other ways to formulate more nuanced payments, based on the specific water-related benefits delivered?

Delegates at the KerryLIFE Slievaduff Forest demonstration site in the Blackwater catchment which is undergoing conversion from monoculture conifer status to native woodland to protect and enhance water quality. Pic courtesy of Declan Little


​This is exactly what Cost Action is investigating, exploring how tree planting and woodland creation can be used as part of wider land-use strategies, to tackle diffuse pollution from agriculture, in order to help water bodies, primarily to achieve their targets under the Water Framework Directive.

This form of integrated catchment management creates multiple benefits to society. However, it is a significant cost to landowners in the absence of a return from wood production immediately adjacent to watercourses. It is seeking to bridge this gap, by combining new economic instruments with spatial targeting, to realise the most cost-effective way to 'deploy' tree planting and woodland creation to maximise water-related benefits.

The new economic instruments emerging focus on flexible, incentive-based Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES), whereby predicted benefits are quantified and their value monetarised at site level, which forms the basis for subsequent payments to the landowner to achieve water-based targets. 

In Killarney, delegates heard a number of keynote addresses including one on ‘Applying the Natural Capital Approach in Ireland’ by Hannah Hamilton, Executive Coordinator at the Irish Forum on Natural Capital. Delegates also visited the KerryLIFE project in the Blackwater catchment to see first-hand woodland mitigation measures at forest and farm level to protect water quality for the benefit of the critically endangered freshwater pearl mussel (Margaritifera margartifera). 

The Irish meeting concluded that it is very important to differentiate between the objectives of forests and woodlands to avoid confusion as sometimes forests can have negative impacts on water quality, especially where mitigation measures are not applied. 

​PESFOR-W includes foresters, economists, agronomists, policymakers, engineers, computer modellers, academic researchers and ecologists, all working together. The Action will consolidate experiences from existing woodlands for water PES schemes in Europe and help standardise approaches to evaluating the environmental effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of woodland measures. It will also create a European network through which PES schemes can be facilitated, extended and improved, for example by incorporating other ecosystem services, such as carbon sequestration.  

Since its inception in 2015, over 600 individuals have registered as members with the Irish Forum on Natural Capital. Here, we break down our diverse membership in terms of their areas of expertise, their key interests and the sectors they are working in.


​As of 9th June 2019, a total of 611 individual have registered as members of the Irish Forum on Natural Capital since the initiative was launched in March 2015. This demonstrates the wide-ranging interest in matters relating to natural capital and the economics of nature.
 
In this blog post, we present charts illustrating the sectors in which members are working, and their declared areas of expertise and interest. These data were collected through the membership registration form.

Interested in registering as a member? Join here. It's free, and you'll receive our monthly newsletter, along with invitations to our regular workshops and seminars.