The GGKP Natural Capital Expert Working Group met in Geneva for an expert workshop on the newly developed Natural Capital Indicators Framework (NCIF). As one of the working group’s flagship projects of 2019, the framework is designed to bridge the knowledge gap for integrating natural capital into national green growth planning. The workshop included a technical review of the framework and its selected indicators and a discussion on how the framework can be applied at the national level by leading green growth organizations.
A useful and useable system
Co-chairs Paul Ekins, Director and Professor at University College London’s Institute for Sustainable Resources, and Joe Grice, Chairman of the United Kingdom Office of National Statistics Economic Experts, opened the workshop by introducing the framework as a promising tool for filling knowledge gaps around natural capital and green growth. Grice said the group hoped the framework could serve as “a useful and usable system” for policy-makers and practitioners who make decisions on economic development which may have potential impacts on natural capital. Ekins emphasized the importance of this framework by noting “there is no widely accepted indicator framework for natural capital.”
Gathering expert input
The first session of the workshop was led by Alison Fairbrass, Research Associate at the University College London, who introduced the technical aspects of the framework. Fairbrass presented an overarching conceptual framework for natural capital before explaining each element of the framework: natural capital stocks, flows, human inputs, benefits and outputs. Following the presentation, participants were invited to share comments and inputs. Several experts noted this framework could be useful at a number of policy levels.
In a second session, the discussion was expanded to the suitability and coherence of the framework’s indicators. Fairbrass focused specifically on commodity asset indicators such as mineral and energy resources, land, soil resources, timber resources, aquatic resources and others biological resources along with ecosystem asset indicators. The session provided an opportunity to leverage the expertise of the working group and incorporate their feedback in the framework and its indicators.
From theory to practice
While the first two sessions focused on the theory underpinning the NCIF, a third session explored its practical applications. Jia Hua, Research Associate in the GGKP Secretariat, presented on the integration of natural capital into existing indicators frameworks. Among other points, Hua emphasized the importance of adopting natural capital methodologies to better capture natural asset values, enriching links between abiotic assets and the economy, and embedding biotic indicators in green growth frameworks.
Hua’s presentation ended on how the NCIF could help sharpen the green growth and biodiversity measurement frameworks, recommending that links between abiotic assets and the economy should be enriched and biotic indicators should be embedded in green growth operation to highlight the role of biodiversity. Her conclusion was a fitting segue into the working group’s larger discussion on thematic applications, especially biodiversity. In this session, Ekins and Grice offered each expert an opportunity to speak on biodiversity, asking for their opinions on how this issue should be considered in future revisions to the NCIF.
A major theme of the later sessions was how to ensure the use and application of this indicators framework in green growth policy decisions that are user-friendly for decision-makers. Several participants offered concrete suggestions for making the framework more straightforward and comprehensible to those outside the expert community. Ekins and Grice agreed that engaging policy-makers will be paramount for the framework to have a significant impact. Ekins remarked that policy-makers increasingly see natural capital as important, and “the next question they ask is ‘how do we measure it?’” He also emphasized that the framework should provide a clear and convincing answer to that question.
Workshop discussions overall demonstrated the many ways in which the NCIF could support green growth and biodiversity outcomes in national and international policy circles. NCIF’s relevance to corporate and financial reporting was also noted. Participants emphasized the need for applications at the sub-national level, including for measures of risk and resilience and for demonstrating policy trade-offs in economic planning.
Next steps
The framework and its indicators will continue to be developed by building on feedback from this workshop. The review of selected indicators for assets, flows, benefits, human inputs and results and their data availability should be followed. In the course of this review, new developments in related initiatives such as the revision process of the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) Experimental Ecosystem Accounting (EEA), or leading indicator frameworks in the green growth and biodiversity communities, will also be considered.
The working group will also continue to engage in the consultative process of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) for the post-2020 biodiversity framework. Further development of the framework will be prioritized through practical application in-country in a co-creative process with GGKP partner institutions. All participants, including the two co-chairs, noted that in order to bring the NCIF from theory to practice, a detailed planning of next steps will be important.
