Natural capital

Farmers and landowners have always derived income from natural capital. But with increasing emphasis on the environment and climate change, new revenue streams based principally on ecosystem services – such as enhancing biodiversity, carbon sequestration and nutrient offsetting – are becoming a key way to generate income, as well as to satisfy their desire to help the environment.

New revenue streams are available as private markets develop. Companies are looking to invest green finance in projects that benefit their corporate image or offset their environmental footprint. These funding sources sit alongside the slightly more ‘traditional’ grants available through government support offering ‘public money for public goods’.

Payments can be associated with a vast range of endeavours – everything from carbon-offsetting and providing cleaner water and air to flood mitigation and biodiversity enhancement.

Many farms and estates are already compiling natural capital accounts which put a value on these assets and help them make strategic land-use decisions to ensure that they can make the most of these new opportunities.

The principles are complex, the tools used to measure this data are constantly evolving and the regulatory backdrop is important to understand, but we can help you value and monetise the full potential of your natural capital.

Our team includes environment experts, ecologists, planners and farm business consultants, perfectly positioning us to help identify and implement opportunities.

We can help you calculate your natural capital ‘baseline’ and model different options for protecting, enhancing and expanding this.

Just three examples of the many opportunities associated with natural capital are:

• Woodland creation funded by a large corporate business that has pledged to plant a tree for every invoice raised
• A water company funding the planting of winter cover crops to reduce nutrient loss from arable land over winter
• Habitat creation funded by the sale of nutrient credits to facilitate nutrient neutrality for developments in select river catchments

We work with individual farmers and landowners, plus have widespread experience of facilitating a joined-up approach at a larger scale to natural capital.

Just one example of the latter is a landscape-scale project we’re managing at Pevensey, working with Sussex Wildlife Trust, Natural England and farmers across hundreds of hectares of grassland to improve habitats for over-wintering birds funded through environmental offsetting payments linked to a regional infrastructure project.