This research explores if and how the concept of ‘Natural Capital’ can influence decision-making in support of sustainability and a Just Transition.
About the project
Across many sectors, decision-making and planning processes have typically not prioritised or consider nature as important. As a result, nature continues to be degraded. One response to this challenge is the concept of ‘Natural Capital’ – the stocks and flows of services arising from nature. Many hope that by highlighting the ecosystem services provided by nature (such as carbon sequestration, pollination, flood risk management) and the quality of underlying stocks or assets (such as soil), nature will be better appreciated and protected in future plans and decisions. It may be especially important and influential for actors who hitherto have not seen themselves as having a role to play in conserving the environment. Accordingly, the Scottish Government currently cites Natural Capital as relevant to managing climate change, biodiversity, and post-COVID economic recovery.
It is important to understand more about the potential approaches and consequences of working with Natural Capital concepts and framings, to understand when and how it influences decision-making. This project, which started in April 2022 and runs until March 2027, therefore aims to provide insights as to if and how Natural Capital data and approaches can help enable and embed transitions to sustainability. A one-page summary of this project’s work and methods is available here.
Our work balances attention across the following:
- Reviewing international examples of the use of Natural Capital in policy-making.
- Transdiciplinary work with policy peers to analyse how Natural Capital is or could be used in Scottish policy processes.
- Evaluating opportunities and consequences of markets and blended finance for natural, economic, human and social capital.
- Building understanding of how private sector actors may be motivated or enabled to support nature-based solutions via Natural Capital.
- Sharing and discussing insights with academic and non-academic stakeholders within and beyond Scotland.
Outputs from this research
Newsletters
- We have a biannual newsletter containing a mix of snippets about our work: subscribe by following this link.
The most recent newsletter, from September 2025, can be found here.
- Past issues: September 2022 – here; March 2023 – here; September 2023 – here; March 2024 – here; September 2024 – here; March 2025 – here.
Briefings
- In April 2025 we made a briefing “Views on Natural Capital and Evidence Use related to Agricultura
l Policy” which is a summary of the full report made in March 2025 (see list of deliverables below).
- In January 2025 we produced a summary of a workshop with international experts on how to encourage use of natural capital in policy-making. It is available here.
- In June 2024 a briefing was produced for Scottish Government, exploring progress and future options for embedding natural capital into policy-making, based on learning from expert work to embed well-being approaches into policy-making. It is available at here.
- In May 2023 a briefing was released “Natural capital assessment in landscape-scale land use planning: how it works and key challenges” led by Leo Peskett (Herriot-Watt University) and co-authored by Kerry Waylen (PI of this project) and Marc Metzger (Edinburgh University). It is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.7488/era/3384
Academic papers
Some of these papers derive wholly from work carried out in this project, others arise from collaborations with other researchers and research initiatives.
- Waylen, K.A.; Patil, I.; Carmen, E. (2026) Can natural capital help national-level policy-makers to embed sustainability considerations? Insights from Scotland, Ecological Economics, 240, February 2026, Art. e108815.
- Reed, M. S., McCarthy, J. M., Jensen, E. A., Everett, R. and Rudman, H. (2025). Governing high-integrity markets for ecosystem services, Ecosystem Services, 75, 101760.
- Glass, J.H.; Waylen, K.A.; Reed, M.S.; Peskett, L.; Stevens, B. (2025) Natural capital approaches to decision-making for collaborative landscape governance, Environmental Science & Policy, 171, Art. E104133
- Glendell, M.; Hare, M.; Waylen, K.A.; Adams, K.; Boucher, J.L.; Gagkas, Z.; Gimona, A.; Martino, S.; Matthews, K.B.; Polhill, J.G. (2025) Systems thinking and modelling to support transformative change: key lessons from inter-disciplinary analysis of socio-ecological systems in applied land systems research, Discover Sustainability, 6, 231
- Barnaud, C.; De Longueville, F.; Gonela, G.; Antona, M.; Dendoncker, N.; Waylen, K.A. (2023) Participatory research on ecosystem services in the face of disputed values and other uncertainties: A review, Ecosystem Services, 63, Art. 101551
Presentations, posters and conference sessions
- In February 2025, Kerry Waylen presented insights from our survey of
policy-makers’ views on Natural Capital, for the RESAS Evidence in Policy fortnight. A related presentation was given in 2024 to Scotland’s Public Sector Natural Capital Network.
- In July 2024, Kerry Waylen presented on how the potential consequences of working with Natural Capital tools could be multiple and varied, focusing on ENCA (Enabling Natural Capital Approach) developed for UK policy-makers, at the EASST 4S 2024 Conference in Amsterdam. Click here to download the slides.
- In September 2023, J. Antonio Ballesteros-Figueroa presented at the Swiss Science, Technology and Society Conference about understanding evidence engagement in the Scottish Government for Natural Capital Policy, the presentation is available here.
- In May 2023, Ishaan Patil presented a poster of preliminary results from our work exploring international cases of policy processes being influenced or using natural capital concepts and tools. Click here to download the poster.
- In August 2022, Kerry Waylen and Chris Short (CCRI) convened a two-part session “Getting to Grips with Natural Capital: Trap or Tool for Transformations to Sustainability?” at the annual international conference of RGS-IBG (Royal Geographical Society and Institute of British Geographers). Project member Hannah Rudman also presented within this session. A 4-page summary of key themes discussed is available here.
- In July 2022, Kerry Waylen presented some early reflections on the challenges of researching and seeking to achieve change with Natural Capital at EASST 2022, the conference of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology, Madrid, July 6-9th. Click here to download the slides.
Principle investigator
Team members
- Esther Carmen
- Karolina Trdlicova
- Diana Valero
- Rebecca Gray
- The SRUC staff involved:
- Alistair McVittie
- Mark Reed
- Imogen Cadwaladr-Rimmer
This project is funded by the Scottish Government RESAS Strategic Research Programme (SRP) 2022-27. It is project ‘JHI-D5-3’ within the Natural Resources Theme.
Other project reports and deliverables
In line with a commitment to Open Science, we make most of our project outputs publically available. Some deliverables are not shared here whilst we prepare academic outputs for publication – but please contact us if there is an area of work that you wish to know more about.
- In March 2025 we produced a report on ‘Views on Natural Capital and Evidence Use in Policy Processes associated with Scotland’s Agricultural Reform Programme‘. This is Deliverable 2.2 from our project, arising from our work on policy processes in WP2.
- In October 2024 a report on ‘Community benefit options for natural capital markets in Scotland’ was launched, connecting insights from this project as well as related UKRI and European Horizon related work by SRUC.
- In September 2023 we drafted a document on our rationale and plan for focussing on the Scotch whisky sector in order to understand how Natural Capital can unlock private-sector investment in nature-based solutions. This is Milestone 4.1 of our project, you can read the report by clicking on the link here.
- In September 2022 we established our protocols for our searches of examples of natural capital being used in policies and in finance (these protocols are respectively milestone 1.1 and milestone 1.2 from our project). Click on the hyperlinks to the Milestone names for more information about these search plans. As of summer 2023 preliminary results from both reviews have been produced – please contact us if you’d like to know more.
- In summer 2022 we carried out a stakeholder analysis to help inform this project’s plans – this was the first milestone from our project, available here.
Datasets and Open Science
Open Science – the idea that the scientific process and its outputs should freely available and widely accessible – is important to us and also a requirement of our funder. However, most of the data produced by this project – such as interview transcripts – contains personal information that could be used to identify people. Honouring commitments to their confidentiality outweighs the desire to make data available. Therefore, this project has not released many raw datasets. However, the methods used to produce or work should be transparent in our deliverables and papers above, and please contact us if we are not clear or if you would like more information. We continue to explore the possibilities for redacting interview and workshop transcripts that still retain information value.
- The dataset for the 2023 survey of policy-makers (see 2026 ecological economics paper above) has been anonymised and is available on zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12205589
