People

Looking at natural capital inherently requires looking at the relationships between humans and their natural environment.

Valuation and governance of natural capital

Looking at natural capital inherently requires looking at the relationships between humans and their natural environment. The concept of ‘capital’ implies that components of the natural environment are valued and seen as assets. But how are such values played out in practice, for example in land management and policy making?

And in today’s societal context, where natural capital has to fulfil multiple, often incompatible functions at once, how can we ensure sustainable governance that safeguards our natural resources?

Our research at the James Hutton Institute addresses a wide range of natural capital that can be regarded as providing provisioning, regulating, supporting and cultural ecosystem services. We have a small team of researchers with expertise in valuation and governance, embedded in UK and European networks and active not only in Scotland but also internationally.

The two major areas of our current natural capital-related research are:

• understanding how people value their natural environment, to improve and integrate monetary and non-monetary valuation approaches to ensure appropriate representation of natural capital and related ecosystem services in decision-making
• examining the role and potential of different governance approaches to safeguard and promote sustainable use of our global natural capital.

Outputs from our work on people can be found on our Research Outputs page.