Natural resources are the foundation of social and economic development. Given the critical role they play in maintaining biodiversity and enabling green economic growth, safeguarding such assets could not be any more pressing.
In response to the growing recognition of the importance of natural capital – soil, water air and all living things – the Green Growth Knowledge Platform (GGKP), through its Expert Group on Natural Capital, has released five reports to advance the state of knowledge on natural capital valuation for green growth and ensure they are reflected in national decision-making processes and achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.
“These reports explore state-of-the-art methods, models, data and tools for mainstreaming natural capital in national green growth policies and practices,” said Paul Ekins, Professor of Resources and Environmental Policy at the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources at University College London and Co-chair of the GGKP working group. “Our expert group leverages global momentum for green growth in order to better value, protect and enhance natural capital in national economic decision-making.”
The first report in the series, Practical Policy Use Cases for Natural Capital Information, provides a snapshot of the current status of public knowledge and documentation, outlining how different types of natural capital information are used to inform and influence government decisions. It reviews 340 natural capital case studies and organizes a policy-relevant subset of over 100 of them into standardized use cases. It also proposes a set of assessment criteria to provide a useful starting point for reviewing natural capital case studies for government decision-making.
“The impact of natural capital information on government decision-making is currently profoundly underreported,” said Joe Grice, Chairman of the UK Office for National Statistics Economic Experts and and Co-chair of the GGKP working group. “This paper supports a call for better documentation of natural capital policy impact, and how this information, through natural capital metrics and data can be used to better inform government decisions.”
To incorporate natural capital into national green growth planning, it is critical for decision-makers to have access to information that reflects the quality, quantity and spatial configuration of natural capital assets. The utility of natural capital analysis for policymaking is ultimately dependent on the availability of information, which can be provided through data platforms and tools. Natural Capital Platforms and Tools for Green Growth Planning aims to bridge the knowledge gap around accessible data on global natural capital assets. To do so, the report assesses 28 platforms and tools based on their potential to provide access, manipulate and visualize natural capital data.
“This analysis can help policymakers and practitioners identify the platforms and tools best suited to help them take greater consideration of natural capital in national economic plans and policies,” says Anil Markandya, Distinguished Ikerbasque Professor, Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3) and Honorary Professor of Economics, University of Bath.
For more sustainable economic development planning, a growing range of international commitments emphasize the need to account for and value natural capital in decision-making. Measuring Nature’s Contribution to Economic Development presents an integrated Natural Capital Indicator Framework, which provides a structure for countries to select and organize indicators to assess their use of and dependence on natural capital. The framework provides decision-makers with a manageable set of natural capital indicators with which to make decisions about economic development that take into account national natural capital and associated flows of benefits. It also integrates indicators from the SDGs.
Achieving a number of SDGs depends on increasing the stock of natural capital. The Natural Capital and the Sustainable Development Goals report goes into detail on how to estimate the “natural capital gap” – the difference between the level of such capital now and the amount that will be needed to meet the SDGs. It also highlights the results of an initial investigation of the link between the SDGs and the natural capital requirements, particularly natural capital-relevant SDGs and their targets, such as SDG 6 (water and sanitation), SDG 13 (climate change), SDG 14 (marine ecosystems) and SDG 15 (terrestrial ecosystems).
“Accounting for natural capital – in accordance with guidelines and standards proposed by the the System of Environmental Economic Accounting (SEEA) is critically important to ensure a more systematic, rigorous and replicable approach to measure the nature contribution to the economy” said Rosimeiry Portela, a Senior Director at Conservation International and the institutional lead on Natural Capital Accounting efforts. “The SEEA ecosystem accounts, in particular, enable information on the nature that underpins development to be measured and presented in a consistent and coherent way, paving the way towards a greener, more sustainable economy and development planning. This is particularly important in developing countries, where the livelihoods of many depend directly on healthy ecosystems”.
A lack of an integrated, inter-institutional integration framework has been identified as a knowledge gap in mainstreaming natural capital into green growth policymaking and economic development. To address this gap, the last report in the series – Recognizing Natural Capital in Policy Frameworks for Green Growth – reviews 11 green growth and natural capital policy frameworks to derive a set of “checklist” criteria for integrating natural capital into green growth policy advice. This integration framework is then applied to the green growth policy frameworks of four leading organizations – Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and World Bank.
“For too long we have pursued growth without taking the full value of nature into consideration,” said John Maughan, Research Programme Manager at the Green Growth Knowledge Partnership (GGKP). “We asked what leading organizations needed to move this forward with countries around the world – and we are starting to find the answers.”
Many of these issues laid out in the five abovementioned reports, as well as the latest methods for assessing natural capital in national policies aimed at achieving sustainable development in the post-COVID recovery, will be further explored in a GGKP webinar on 6 October (15.00 CEST).
The Expert Group on Natural Capital – comprised of 24 senior members of international organizations and leading research institutions from GGKP’s partner institutions – has made significant progress on the issue since it was set up three years ago and will continue to meet during the year to push forward the knowledge frontier around natural capital and green growth.