Land and property specialist Strutt & Parker and the Economics for the Environment Consultancy (Eftec) have teamed up to help rural landowners enhance and unlock the potential of their natural capital assets.
Collaboration
Natural capital accounting is a way of measuring, monitoring and valuing a farm or estate’s natural capital assets – such as soil, water and wildlife habitat – presenting the information in a similar way to a set of financial accounts.
The collaboration will enable the production of natural
capital accounts for farm businesses. This ties in with the forthcoming Environmental Land Management Scheme (ELMS) which will require farmers to understand the goods they provide.
Huge interest
Strutt & Parker head of rural James Farrell said: “There is a huge amount of interest in natural capital at present, linked to concerns about climate change and declines in biodiversity.
“The more that landowners understand about the quantity and quality of their natural capital assets, the better placed they will be to make decisions about how best to manage them.
“It will also help to identify where there might be potential to open up new income streams, through the provision of ecosystem services such as the generation of carbon credits.”
