Distributional issues in Natural Capital Accounting
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Background
Accounting for ecosystems is increasingly central to natural capital accounting. What is missing from this is an answer to questions about how natural capital is distributed: that is, who consumes ecosystem services and who owns the underlying assets.
We are interested in how ecosystem assets (which is a form of natural capital) are distributed – among institutional owners across space, from the perspective of two contrsting ecosystem services: carbon sequestration and air polution removal
The findings indicate the relative importance of private land in ecosystem service supply, rather than publically-held land. They also show a relative concentration of ownership for land providing comparatively high amounts of carbon sequestration, while for air pollution removal, however, the role of smaller to medium sized land holdings closer to urban settlements becomes more prominent.
These findings have implications in the debates about agricultural and environmental policies in Scotland and the UK. We argue that understanding distributional issues concerning the supply and consumption of ecosystem services may help to anticipate wealth and income distribution consequences of environmental policy.
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Outputs:
Initial reflections on the integration of distributional aspects in Natural Capital Accounting: SEGS Blog
Working paper on: Distributional issues in natural capital accounting
An audio presentation can be found here
For any inquiries, please contact Paola Ovando Pol.
