The National Infrastructure Commission has assessed the impact of the environment and climate change on future infrastructure. It includes analysis of water quality and water resource impacts, and looks at the prospects for integrating green infrastructure and natural capital into future infrastructure plans.
A blueprint for investing in natural capital alongside development to improve the environment, economy and social wellbeing has been devised by the Humber Nature Partnership.
The vision, published in June, calls on businesses and planners to work together to help “rebuild the image of the Humber as a 21st century landscape [to] provide the best environmental settings and the right skills and services to attract high quality investment”.
Natural capital will be incorporated into national infrastructure planning, according to the National Infrastructure Commission.
An online platform developed in the EU which is dedicated to natural capital, ecosystem services and nature-based solutions may soon be going global.
The platform, known as Oppla, was launched in September 2016 by two EU-funded research projects. Since then it has been growing rapidly. Now sixty universities have contributed.
Proponents of natural capital claim it could be the answer to the unrelenting decline of nature in the UK that no amount of targets, conventions or agri-environment schemes have arrested.
Natural capital refers to the elements of nature that create benefits for society and is based on accountancy principles: natural capital stocks (such as forests) provide ecosystem services (for example water attenuation) that can be valued in terms of their benefits (such as flood defence) to the economy.
“This is an excerpt from a paper given by Donal Daly, manager of the Catchments Unit at the EPA, at a meeting of the International Association of Hydrogeologists (Irish Chapter) in Tullamore in April 2017. It explores the role of natural capital in catchment management and outlines a framework for ‘catchment services’. The full paper can be downloaded here.
