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

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. 

Leading developer of the System of Environmental-Economic Accounts (SEEA) Mark Eigenraam was in Dublin recently to deliver a workshop on Ecosystem Accounting, with an accompanying presentation by Bord na Mona's Catherine Farrell on applying the system within the Irish company. 
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Mark, Director of the Institute for the Development of Environmental-Economic Accounting (IDEEA Group) in Melbourne, headed the working group to develop the UN-supported statistical standard of environmental accounting, set to be formally recognised in 2020 once its review process is complete.

In the course of the event, he discussed how the model works in practice as applied at a farm and local level, saying: "One of the key messages coming through is it's more than accounting in the traditional sense of looking at tables, this is actually spatial accounting - you start with location, the spatial context is important as it's the recognition of the relationship between people, economies, urban centres and the environment."

The workshop took place in Trinity College's Botany Department on April 12, and was followed by a talk on the development of an Ecosystem accounting model for the rehabilitation of peat bogs for Bord na Mona by Dr Farrell.

You can watch both presentations below.

Professor Jane Stout, Director of the IFNC, will be speaking at the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht's information session on the Heritage Ireland 2030 consultation, on Tuesday, May 28th in the Printworks, Dublin Castle, from 12-4pm.
 
During the recent Heritage Ireland 2030 public consultation, over 70 public workshops were held across the country and more than 1,500 organisations and individuals made submissions on what the country’s heritage means to them. The IFNC contributed to this consultation, calling for the implementation of the National Biodiversity Action Plan, the progression of natural capital accounts for Ireland, and the development of a State of Natural Capital Report for Ireland.
 
Since the consultation process closed in March, the Department has been reviewing the large number of submissions, laying the foundations for what will become Ireland’s overarching heritage policy.

To mark the end of the public consultation, the information session aims to take stock of what the Heritage Ireland 2030 process has achieved to date, hear some of the initial findings from the consultation and provide information about the next steps in the process.

Tune in via the live stream at 2pm on Tuesday, May 28th to hear Prof Stout outline the need for natural capital to be incorporated into the Department's heritage planning. 
 
When: Tuesday, 28 May 2019 (12pm – 4pm)
Where: The Printworks, Dublin Castle; online via live-stream
How: Registration is closed. Watch the live-streamed event here on the Department website from 12pm 
More info: https://www.chg.gov.ie/heritage/heritageireland2030/
 

A new online course in Biodiversity Finance will feature a case study of Ireland as the first Western country to apply the BIOFIN methodology in its Biodiversity Expenditure Review.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and partners are running a free online course on Biodiversity Finance from 15 April, 2019. This seven-week course is designed to train biodiversity policymakers and practitioners to use the language of business and finance to better conserve biodiversity while delivering on national economic priorities.

When?  April 15-May 31 (7 weeks)
Where?  Online 
How?  Register free here

According to the UNDP, humanity depends on nature, yet we have historically ignored its value – the world’s natural capital is worth US$125 trillion per year. Nature’s services are threatened by conflicting private and public interests, ineffective policy and governance, and insufficient financing. It’s vital to make an urgent business case for financially sound and politically feasible solutions for biodiversity. 

This course aims to teach participants how to assess the policy, institutional, and economic context for biodiversity finance; conduct a financial needs assessment to achieve a country’s biodiversity goals; and, develop a biodiversity finance plan for most suitable finance solutions. 

It will feature Ireland's Biodiversity Expenditure Review examining how researchers Craig Bullock and Rachel Morrison (University College Dublin) broke new ground in applying the Biodiversity Finance Initiative methodology to track and mobilise finance for biodiversity. This is now being followed up with a Financial Needs Assessment for biodiversity, which was one of the Seeds for Nature from the National Biodiversity Conference. Both projects are co-funded by the National Parks and Wildlife Service and the Irish Research Council.

See: ​www.biodiversityfinance.net/news-and-media/free-online-course-biodiversity-finance-starts-15-april-2019 for more details.