NCWG activities

The well-attended 11 July 2024 meeting of the UKEOF Natural Capital Working Group featured presentations from three of the four UK countries (excluding Northern Ireland) and one from the ONS. The idea for the meeting stemmed from discussions at the joint EO CAL/VAL and NCWG meeting held in London in June where we had explored the use of EO data for Natural Capital reporting. The potential use of EO data was seen as an area which could help harmonise NC monitoring across the four UK nations. This meeting sought to establish the current status of Natural Capital monitoring in each of the UK Countries.

Presentations were given by:

Hazel Trenbirth at ONS, who outlined what the ONS currently produce and highlighted where there are gaps at UK and Country level. Marine accounting was currently considered to be rather aggregated given the range of marine habitats. ONS uses the SEEA (UN) system of ecosystem accounting.

Mike Young (NE) and Andy Nisbet (NE) who talked through marine and terrestrial Natural Capital Monitoring in England. They stressed an emphasis (in England) on actionable risks related to six broad policy areas and pointed to fairly extensive monitoring programmes that are up and running. 

Chris Leakey (NatureScot) and Donya Davidson (NatureScot) who talked through marine and terrestrial Natural Capital Monitoring in Scotland. There is currently no funded programme in Scotland, and whilst there has been a lot of consideration as to what it should look like, the next stage is to consider how to implement it. Both emphasised a need for standardised approaches within and across countries.

James Skates (Welsh Gov) who talked through terrestrial Natural Capital Monitoring in Wales. Wales have been carrying out monitoring over recent decades and WG reports on the State of Natural Capital in Wales and are using models to look at the impacts of policies on natural capital.

James Warnock (DAERA) was unable to make the meeting but sent a note regarding the current position in Northern Ireland, which was that whilst there are data sources and ongoing monitoring that could contribute to natural capital assessments, there is no current natural capital agenda in Northern Ireland.

Following the presentations the group discussed potential UK co-ordination on UK monitoring, starting with some of the points raised in the output from the Joint Working Group meeting in June.

We identified a need for ongoing discussions between those responsible for monitoring natural capital assets in the four nations to consider issues including:

1. What needs to be monitored?
2. What data do we have, what data DON’T we have?
3. What will be the reporting mechanism? e.g. for water bodies, the Water Framework Directive (WFD) provided a common approach across countries. Will this continue? If not, what will replace it?
4. What are the weaknesses and strengths of different approaches (across countries, within countries)?
5. How will the data be converted into measures of natural capital assets? (e.g., how do we relate to evidence on human use/ecosystem services?) Do we have common definitions of ecosystem services? Should we have asset/service matrices for terrestrial, freshwater, marine?
6. How do we go beyond reporting on state to understand how changes in ‘state’ shift behaviour?
7. People and Nature Survey in England (and Wales): can it be used to update recreation status? Are there equivalents in Scotland/Northern Ireland?
    

Two of our UKEOF Working Groups, the Natural Capital WG and the Earth Observation Calibration and Validation WG, held a joint workshop on 1 May 2024 in London.

Workshop aims

Accurate assessments of natural capital are essential to enable the management of nature for the continued delivery of the benefits on which the economy and society rely. There is an urgent need to produce this data before our natural capital stocks diminish further. Despite ever-expanding volumes of earth observed data, evidence gaps on the quantity, quality and location of natural capital assets remain. Whilst earth observation data (e.g., from satellites & drones) can play a vital role, our ability to derive information from these data is constrained by a lack of suitable ground-based observations and a lack of clarity over what is needed. This workshop brought together EO and ground-based monitoring specialists with natural capital specialists from across the UK to explore novel ways to enhance environmental monitoring for natural capital assessments.

Outcomes

The first set of outcomes focused on the role of the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) funded EO data hub  and its potential interactions with this group. The group will encourage the EO data hub to:

• Ensure good metadata on existing products and their use is available and accessible
• Focus on the provision of centralised intermediate data products for the community to reduce overlaps and inefficiencies in data processing
• Interact with the wider monitoring community through this UKEOF group to better define user requirements for EO data (raw data, intermediate products, or final evidence). To facilitate this, work with this group to develop a business case for supporting effective interactions between the hub and those monitoring natural capital across the UK
• Encourage the EO data hub to connect to a centre providing field verification for EO products. 

The second set of outcomes focused on the use of common measurements & definitions for natural capital reporting across the 4 nations of the UK, including: 

• An agreed standardised and limited set of metrics all nations could agree to collect and report on, potentially linked to ONS reporting at UK scales. These metrics could be a subset of the nation-specific indicators already prioritised for national (not UK) needs. Some of these would be by EO (but perhaps not all)
• The use of a common set of land cover classes and land uses which scale between EO and field data collection, e.g., UKHab
• Standardised LIDAR data collection (resolution and frequency) across the UK, currently Scotland do not have any data. 

These outcomes were linked to the needs of Local Authorities for easily accessible data products to help them with issues around private funding for Biodiversity and Carbon and the group suggested that: 

• Public funding should be used as efficiently as possible, through partnership working to produce the data products needed
• OS offered an open door to work with them to provide a high-resolution product for the whole community including local authorities
• Ideally all four nations would agree on common approach for metrics for BNG reporting.

Overarching recommendations

1. EO and Field data must be brought together more if EO products are going to be trusted and used by the whole community
2. More partnership working across organisations and across countries is required, leading to less duplication and more efficiency in use of public funding
3. Language is important if our products are going to be useful, language needs to practical and accessible for all
4. Budgets  for exploratory research, such as new and novel uses of EO need to include funding for aligned field campaigns which is available for all parties/partners
5. If we are to use EO (or field) data within our monitoring strategies there is a need for long term operational budget lines. For field, EO and LIDAR programmes, assurance is needed that these data streams can be used long term
6. Those monitoring natural capital need to engage with all modelling communities to ensure data are fit for purpose. This includes field and modelling communities especially EO and AI and processed based modellers e.g. land surface modelling. (Specific examples discussed: Earth system modelling, JULES and urban version on JULES, and ecological and forestry models, soil, air etc.)
    

The November 2023 meeting of the UKEOF Natural Capital Working Group featured two presentations exploring natural capital monitoring in the UK Overseas Territories (UKOTs). This was one of the themes selected by the group earlier in the year. Apart from the secretariat and Chair there were 13 members participating in the actual meeting including Matt Smith, formerly of UKEOF and JNCC.

Alyssa Fischer from JNCC leads a team of 22 expert scientists to deploy and advise on nature-based solutions for climate resilience in ODA-eligible countries and small island nations, including the UK's Overseas Territories. The team supports local governments in gathering and modelling evidence, developing local capacity, and translating science into policy to support improved disaster resilience, respond to urgent conservation needs, and create opportunities for alternative sustainable livelihoods. Alyssa talked us through the kind of work that has been done in various of the UKOTs and the increasing importance of quantifying and mainstreaming natural capital in policy decisions. She raised the importance of understanding:

• Physical extent and condition of natural capital assets and the services they provide, and
• Risk and vulnerability of assets – sensitivity to pressures – like natural events and human management.

She showed examples from Anguilla of effective modelling to help understand how natural capital assets like reefs protect other forms of capital (e.g., built). She highlighted the need for good validation data (for Earth Observation, EO) in Turks and Caicos. She also talked about the Falkland Isles, where production practices are eroding natural capital assets.

Alan Gray from UKCEH has been working in the UKOTs since 1998 helping to integrate scientific approaches to biodiversity conservation, during his talk he explored some of the problems, successes and opportunities to approaching long term monitoring of biodiversity conservation in the UKOTs to meet global conservation targets. He used some examples, mainly from the South Atlantic where most of his work has been based, but this work was relevant across the UKOTs.

Alan discussed the lack of long-term monitoring approaches in the UKOTs and subsequent use of EO data and other sensors with inherent limitations (resolution, evolution and lack of support). He described the monitoring as having episodic funding difficulties (as has been the case for the UK countries).

The presentations raised the profile of the UKOTs with the Working Group and stressed the importance of monitoring in our most biodiversity-rich territories.

The July 2023 meeting of the UKEOF Natural Capital Working Group featured two presentations exploring the role of natural capital monitoring in Net Gain initiatives. This was one of the themes selected by the group earlier in the year. Apart from the secretariat and Chair there were 9 members participating in the actual meeting.  

The first presentation was given by Nick White at Natural England. Nick works across Government (national and local), and with developers, NGOs and academia to advance policy, practice and standards around net gain (biodiversity, natural capital and environmental). His current work focuses on biodiversity net gain legislation, the biodiversity metric and biodiversity net gain standards and guidance and he is also working on the evolving approach to marine net gain. Nick described the current legislation on Biodiversity Net Gain advising that the secondary legislation supporting Net Gain was close to being published. This will include a register of irreplaceable habitats, exemptions and the BNG procedure and approval process. He described the BNG metric v4 and its importance for baselining and providing a consistent approach, using habitats as a proxy for biodiversity. Legislation is expected by November for major development projects and from April 2024 for minor projects. BNG will require a minimum period of 30 years for habitat maintenance and associated funding. It will be used across England, Scotland and Wales and potentially more widely across Europe. It will be monitored at macro and micro scales. Local government resources will need to be adequate to enforce the policy, but it is envisaged that its implementation can help to promote the need for environmental specialist jobs. Nick also mentioned the Environmental Benefits for Nature Tool which will build on BNG and look at wider ecosystem services.

The second presentation was given by Dr Heiko Balzer, professor of Geography at Leicester University. Heiko presented the results of a small piece of work looking at the use of LIDAR data to assess above and belowground carbon in hedges in Cumbria. Destructive sampling of hedges was used to validate and train the model which indicated that in the case of the hedges sampled (10) there was likely to be as much below, as above ground carbon. Heiko stressed that extrapolation would need to be treated with caution due to the very high variability between hedges even at local scales. There followed some discussion of hedges within BNG where there is a requirement for a 10% net gain in hedgerows on any development site regardless of impact on hedgerows. Heiko’s project had been done in conjunction with a company looking for potential applications for commercial carbon markets.

The group then shared ideas on topics to be covered in a joint meeting with the EO CAL/VAL group, which will be the next meeting of the group and members shared updates on their current natural capital monitoring activities.

The April, 2023 meeting of the UKEOF Natural Capital Working Group featured two presentations under the theme The role of risk registers for natural capital monitoring. This theme was selected earlier in the year from a range of options the group agreed were of interest. 

The first presentation was given by Lucian Fernandez-Slade, who is working on developing marine natural capital approaches to underpin Scotland’s Blue Economy at NatureScot, titled “Creating a Natural Capital Asset and Risk Register for Falmouth Harbour Commissioners.” Lucian’s presentation covered how an asset and risk register can provide a meaningful risk assessment and produce actions to reduce impact. The project identified assets and linked them each to different ecosystem services as well as evaluating the asset’s status. Questions on the project and risk registers touched on the need to incorporate climate change modelling as a risk, and the need for more information on the links between the condition and the provision of ecosystem services. 

The second presentation was given by Dr Patricia Rice, a senior specialist in the Ecosystem Approach and Natural Capital at Natural England, titled “Developing a risk register for Natural England’s State of Natural Capital Reporting.” The presentation covered the proposed focus of a report on how natural capital assets fit in policy areas which use ecosystem services as the bridge to think about this. The report suggests indicators that measure change in natural capital assets, with a risk register to link to policy delivery. There was discussion on how defining condition and standardising indicators pose a challenge as well as the need to have a consensus on how we measure the environment. The group also discussed the need to understand what is happening across the whole landscape, not just protected areas, as well as looking at metrics for different targets and commitments that could potentially open up funding streams. Points were also made about the challenges of using a target-based approach, with regard to targets not being available for most of the ecosystem asset indicators, as well as the fact that existing targets were not designed to assess the provision of ecosystem services. The group suggested a UK Risk Register would be interesting to see, and Paul Robinson agreed to take this idea back to JNCC.

The idea for the meeting was to hold a debate with deliberately polarised views on the current status of monitoring across the UK countries. Instead, due to a lack of a volunteer to present an opposing view, Lisa Norton provided a deliberately challenging presentation highlighting the ongoing lack of national expert field monitoring across most UK countries and the apparent lack of consideration about the importance of these methods for monitoring change. Lisa challenged the continued emphasis on emerging technologies (e.g. Earth observation) and on citizen science, highlighting the costs of such approaches and their over-emphasis resulting in less money being available to fund expert field monitoring. She concluded that monitoring is more urgent than ever to understand the state of the environment and that we have not argued strongly enough for monitoring systems that will remain in place in the long term and provide us with the data we need to assess our impacts on the environment.

The provocation did its work and a lively debate ensued from all participants present (13 + Lisa). Attendees felt that Lisa had raised a number of valid points, not least that monitoring does need to be long term in the future and relate directly to existing data. However, some argued that a strong case for monitoring has been made, not least from the perspective of monitoring policy impacts, such as the introduction on ELMS. It was argued that both citizen science and earth observation had a role to play alongside expert monitoring and that citizen science, whilst not ‘cheap’ can offer savings if used in the right way. Savings include lowered mileage and carbon usage. It was also argued that earth observation can provide greater coverage and cover ‘hard to reach’ areas, and could help to screen for the areas most needing expert field data. The use of automated processes to save time, including AI, was raised as a valuable tool for processing monitoring data.

Other issues raised included the extent to which we effectively use the data we do collect – and to what extent we have easy to understand (by policy and public) agreed criteria for measuring natural capital within or across countries. We discussed whether Natural Capital measures need to link to statutory frameworks and to funding, so that Nature Positive can be a measured reality – e.g. Targets developed from the 25 Year Environment Plan.

Whilst there has been a focus on developing monitoring, at the same time there have been declines in monitoring (e.g. the WFD) which are of concern. Soil has been poorly monitored – although Countryside Survey soil sampling (last done in 2007) has now been repeated under UKCEH’s UKSCAPE (final year of the rolling programme 2023). It was widely agreed that woodlands are the best monitored terrestrial habitats and that meteorological monitoring is very successful. Both of these receive fundamental government support because of their strong economic, social and political impacts. Monitoring needs an approach that is sustainable longer term, being able to adapt, and use both old data and new.