Biodiversity Week event on Natural Capital with NCI and Green Foundation Ireland

Natural Capital Ireland has teamed up with Green Foundation Ireland for a free event for Biodiversity Week, May 20, 2024, exploring how the natural capital approach has developed.

NCI has been invited to collaborate on a Biodiversity Week event with Green Foundation Ireland which specialises in educational events that focus on communicating various pressing environmental topics to the public and allowing an opportunity for question and discussion. To explore where natural capital sits in terms of biodiversity conservation for this year's National Biodiversity Week, we are bringing together a number of academics working on pioneering projects that involve the natural capital approach, and are developing new ways to apply it in Ireland to enable us to value, protect and restore nature.

It has been a decade since Natural Capital Ireland was first set up to advocate for an emerging approach to better valuing nature into economic and policy decisions for a more sustainable future. There have been many major developments in the field of natural capital accounting in that time, and as the movement has built momentum, with rapid advances on a global and individual project scale, NCI has been both an observer and directly invoved in many of the projects and events that have involved ecosystem accounting and nature restoration, a topic which we will explore further this year to mark our 10-year anniversary.

Read more on the event details and speakers below:

Event: Biodiversity in Everyday Decision Making: A Natural Capital Approach

Date: Monday, May 20, 2024

Venue: National College of Ireland, Dublin

Register: Free HERE on eventbrite

Dr Catherine Farrell, Trinity College Dublin, ecologist, will speak about the EPA Research project and its recent report findings - INCASE, Irish Natural Capital Accunting for Sustainable Environments) - applying natural capital in four Irish catchments to develop accounts on ecosystem extent and condition and how the report recommendations can inform future sustainability work.

Dr Emer Ní Dhúill, Natural Capital Ireland researcher and Policy Working Group lead will outline more on our work and recent policy developments in the area of natural capital here and abroad. She is co-author of the recent NESC report on Natural Capital policy in Ireland and chief researcher for the Business For Biodiversity Ireland platform.

Dr Jimmy O'Keeffe, hydrologist, DCU, has recently embarked on a new project, VniC-Health, exploring the effects of green space and biodiversity on health and wellbeing in urban communities, in collaboration with Science Foundation Ireland, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and Ballymun City Farm, with the aim of creating a tool to support the valuing of nature for its benefits to our physical and mental health.

Kathleen Conroy, PhD Candidate, Trinity College Dublin, is on the ForES project team, which, backed by Department of Agriculture, Food & the Marine, are applying the natural capital approach at Coillte woodland sites to see how multiple forest ecosystem services can be valued and potentially enhanced using the Bayesian Belief Network to model outcomes for a decision-support tool for use by landowners and foresters.

This event will offer an opportunity to engage in discussion with four experts on natural capital and discuss ideas about how the approach is developing and will be applied in future to inform decisions about land use by highlighting the role these natural systems play in providing essential services and benefits to society.

This event is part of National Biodiversity Week 2024 organised by the Irish Environmental Network.

Visit Green Foundation Ireland event page here to read more and register.