Interview with Trinity Professor and Co-Founder of Natural Capital Ireland, Jane Stout by Dylan Krug

Interview with Trinity Professor and Co-Founder of Natural Capital Ireland, Jane Stout

By Dylan Krug, JS Environmental Science

Natural capital accounting is a concept that treats natural resources as assets or stocks that yield a flow of benefits to people. Viewing natural resources through both economic and ecological lenses is an interdisciplinary process that brings together ecologists, economists, business owners, and policy makers. I spoke with Professor Jane Stout about the natural capital accounting approach to environmental management. Jane Stout is a Professor in Botany at Trinity College Dublin, a co-founder of Natural Capital Ireland and a co-founder of the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan. Natural Capital Ireland has partnered with Trinity College, University College Dublin, NUI Galway, University of Limerick, and the IDEEA Group in a project called Irish Natural Capital Accounting for Sustainable Environments (INCASE), a program building natural capital accounts in four Irish catchments.

Ecosystems and Economies are two very complicated systems, how do you study and communicate their interactions without oversimplifying?

That’s a great question, and the answer is that it’s hard. Economists and ecologists have different conceptual backgrounds in different languages, but as ecologists what we do is we study and try to understand the complexities of nature. We look at how ecosystems work, we look at the behaviours and interactions of the systems components, we look at production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. These are all exactly the same principles that economists study. The approach of ecologists and the approach of economists aren’t that far apart, but we’ve been working very separately and using these different philosophies and languages. So for real sustainability ecologists and economists need to work together because nature’s economy, our ecosystems, underpin everything. By understanding nature’s economy by working with economists who understand the human economy we can bring these systems closer together because if they are not aligned then it’s bad news for both. Through the work on Natural Capital Ireland and through the INCASE project we are learning how to study and communicate clearly across disciplines. We are learning how to do this clearly and without dumbing it down. It is complicated, it takes effort, it takes time, but it’s really exciting. I’m an ecologist, I can appreciate that ecosystems are these networks of interactions where something changes over here and you don’t know what the consequences are, it’s the same in economics and economic systems. You can see that the consequences of one unexpected change can ripple throughout different systems.

People tend to misunderstand the natural capital approach when first learning of it. For the benefit of our readers, could you address the concerns that natural capital accounting commodifies nature and disregards nature’s intrinsic value? Yes, absolutely, that’s something we absolutely encounter. As an ecologist promoting the natural capital approach some of the fiercest criticisms I get are from my side of the house, from those with an ecological or conservationist background. Just to be clear, the natural capital approach uses the language of economics and business specifically to engage those audiences that aren’t intrinsically interested in nature. Natural capital accounting is an economic metaphor for nature, and the concept is all about linking underlying nature as stocks from which flow goods, services, and benefits to people. So it’s all about linking nature and people, it’s a human centric concept but it doesn’t commodify nature. This is very important, it’s about valuing nature, not putting a price tag on it. Those

Interview Page 84 values might not necessarily be monetary, some might be but not necessarily. The concept doesn’t disregard or replace the intrinsic value of nature, it just tries to make our dependencies on nature visible and by accounting for them, it’s a way to quantify that dependency and track change over time. To me it is one tool in the tool box to try to protect and restore nature both for its own sake, for its intrinsic value, and for our own sake. For me personally it’s been a tool to engage in those conversations where previously we were meeting only closed doors.

This INCASE program is pioneering the building of natural capital accounts in Ireland. You led

Phase 1 of the INCASE project, reviewing the existing body of work on natural capital to compile a literature review with Catherine Farrell. What were some of your main takeaways

about the existing methodologies in natural capital accounting? It’s something we talked about for a long time in Natural Capital Ireland about having this pilot, demonstrating that it can actually work. We are halfway through the project, two years in. We started by seeing what everyone else was doing, what’s going [on] in the literature and around the world. There are a lot of different approaches to natural capital accounting depending on what you wanted to do. There is corporate natural capital accounting for businesses and that was driven very much by the Capitals Coalition and the Natural Capital Protocol. What we found was that the UN’s System for Environmental Economic Accounting (SEEA), particularly the Ecosystems Accounts (SEEA-EA) which is spatially explicit, this framework is very widely used, it’s very well standardised, it’s holistic, and it’s flexible and it’s one that’s doable in Ireland. We looked at these different approaches and methods and we settled on the UN backed SEEA-EA approach for all of these reasons, and it’s doable at a range of scales as well, so individual businesses, sectors, ecosystem types, for example the Center for Statistics Office is starting with ecosystem accounting for peatland. It can be scaled up to regions. We are doing it for catchment levels which brings its own challenges and it can be scaled up nationally. Because it uses standards to verify data it’s very robust and it’s what many other countries are doing, so I think that’s what the take home message is from our literature review - that this is an approach to use and lets get on with it. It’s coming down the line in terms of obligations internationally, even nationally we have a national biodiversity action plan, there’s a target to integrate ecosystems into accounts. The time is now, we do have to get on and do this. We concluded at the end of the literature review that this was the best approach and that we could do it. So we did.

Under the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) and the River Basin Management Plan, water catchments have developed a large body of knowledge to draw from. What gets measured gets managed, so for less well understood ecosystems how does one begin monitoring an ecosystem with the end goal of developing natural capital accounts? That’s another good question and I am glad you didn’t ask me that a year ago. We learned a lot over the last year. Your starting point is knowing what ecosystems you have, where they are, and their condition. Having data, spatial data, good quality information about land cover and state of the ecosystems is really important. From the other end of the SEEA-EA, knowing what benefits are derived from a particular area, who’s benefiting, what services of the underlying ecosystem deliver those benefits is really important. The whole approach needs lots of data in formats that can be used and repeated over time so that we can track changes. It’s a huge job. We are working with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) catchments unit because as you mentioned they already have these good catchment based approaches to assessing and managing, developed under the WFD. What has become clear is that we are lacking condition data on most ecosystems apart from the freshwater ecosystems. The freshwater systems have been assessed under the WFD with indicators for condition. We have them for the whole country, water system by water system, it’s really great. But when it comes to woodlands, to peatlands to all the other types of habitats, we don’t have that condition data at scale. There are bits and pieces of data from individual projects, from reporting, from other EU directives like the Habitat Directive, but we don’t have that detailed available condition data. So the starting point is what do we have, getting the spatial data, understanding what the benefits and services are but I think the challenges we will face nationally going forward is that condition data. I think we need to have a national ecosystem assessment that provides us with ecosystem condition data across the country and it can’t just be a one off. It needs to be repeated and updated so we can track this change over time. The services that

flow from the assets depend on the condition of those assets. If our peatland is degraded it ends up not storing carbon but emitting carbon so it’s not providing the benefit that we want in terms of carbon storage.

People and businesses show interest in preserving pollinators even if they themselves are not directly dependent on them. What has been the secret to engaging people with the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan?

It’s really interesting, the natural capital conversation has been harder in terms of people worrying that we are commodifying nature and a little bit skeptical about the approach and all the rest of it. The pollinator plan on the other hand has been a much easier sell. A lot of people want to do something for nature and biodiversity but they don’t know what to do. Pollinators, I think, have really acted as a flagship. They’re something people can get on board with so bees are charismatic, everyone knows something about bees, about butterflies. The link between pollinators and the benefits of pollination is clear and tangible. Anyone who has an apple tree in their garden knows that if a bee doesn’t visit the apple flower, and transfer pollen between flowers, then you don’t produce any apples. It’s a really clear tangible message of a benefit that we are getting from nature, so it is very closely linked to the natural capital approach but it’s focusing on a single service. We also have data on the state of bees. We did a workshop in 2006 where we looked at the status of all the bee species in Ireland and did this formal process of assessing their conservation status. We found that one third of Irish bee species are facing extinction. So this makes it a really clear and simple message: bees, they’re charismatic, they’re doing something good, they’re at threat of extinction. I think that sort of clear message has been one way of engaging people with pollinators. But really what I think is key to engagement on the pollinator plan has been working across sectors. Working with community groups, schools, gardners, the farming community, business and providing clear guidelines on what they can actually do. So when we say “gosh, pollinators are in trouble”, the first thing people turn around and say is “oh I know, isn’t it terrible? What can we do?” Working with and providing all of these sectors with clear and tailored guidance on what they can do has been really one of the big successes of the pollinator plan, and those guidelines are based on science. You need the evidence to support that the actions actually work and have a positive benefit otherwise you’ve got people running all over the place doing things that they think are good for nature that actually turn out not to be which can cause more harm than good but it can also disillusion people and turn them off if what they try to do doesn’t actually make any difference. I think there are lots of really interesting questions about why people engage with pollinators and why the pollinator plan works.

Bees have the benefit of being viewed quite fondly by many. How do we cultivate the same level of public engagement and care for species that don’t have that advantage like large predators, spiders, or native “weeds?”

That is a good question as well. I suppose on the one hand we don’t have to. If we’ve got our flagships species it means we can restore natural habitat with them. We don’t have to convince everyone that every species is important. But on the other hand, as ecologists, we know that ecosystems are intricate networks of interactions and if we lose species from the system than the whole system is less resilient in the face of climate change and things like that. The whole system functions less well and we derive less benefit from it. Sending some clear general messages is important: diversity is good, diversity of species and habitat is good. Being positive, nature benefits our health, wealth and wellbeing. Focus on how we benefit from nature and what we can do to restore it going forward. I think sending those clear general messages about diversity means you don’t have to love everything, but we are all better off if we’ve got that diversity there. That’s my thoughts anyway.

The first Pollinator Plan ran from 2015-2020. The 2021-2025 plan is said to be more ambitious, what do you see changing in your approach? Yes, it is more ambitious. More partners, more actions, more support, more interactions internationally, more people on board, more nuanced guidelines regarding actions, more monitoring of what’s being done and pollinator populations themselves. When we launched the first plan in 2015 we had no idea how successful it would be

Interview Page 86 and how much support there would be for it and how much demand there would be for it. So this second phase we are really building on that, building on the relationships that have been formed in the first phase, building on the enthusiasm and the weight of expectations. Phase two is more ambitious and I am really looking forward to that launching towards the end of March.

Ultimately it seems natural capital accounting equips policy makers, businesses, and people with the information and understanding necessary to make decisions more in line with the green initiatives like the Irish Climate Action Plan. In what way, anecdotally, have you seen your work with stakeholders change their actions?

These are the questions that academics are always being asked. What’s your impact, what impact are you having? In terms of the natural capital approach we have several semi-state bodies now who embarked on natural capital accounting projects. We’ve got businesses that are starting to realise they are at risk of degradation of their natural capital. They are realising that biodiversity loss might actually affect them. If you look at the world economic forum risk index for the past 5 or 10 years you can see that these environmental risks including biodiversity loss, natural resource loss, and climate change are moving steadily up the scale of likelihood and impact. They’re starting to want to do something. Businesses don’t just want to clean up their image, some of the serious ones realise they actually have to change their practices if they want to survive. People don’t like greenwashing but with the impact on supply chains, they are realising that this is real. Policy makers are realising that this is coming down the line in terms of natural capital accounting they are starting to engage. We’ve got engagement across different areas, for example in the department of agriculture they are very interested in how the approach can inform payments to farmers and interested in how we can measure the success of peatland restoration which is very important in terms of the climate action plan. Also, I suppose in terms of climate mitigation, where do we plant trees? Where is the best place for the trade-offs and I think that is something the natural capital accounts really help us do is highlight those trade-offs. Where do you plant trees so that you get both carbon benefits for climate mitigation but also biodiversity and recreation benefits? Working again with semistates and government departments starting to develop those processes. I think there really is a change in the way some stakeholders are operating and I can see more and more of this in the future, there is more and more demand.

We are trying to push the point that this natural capital accounting framework is a good way to go. So long as there is monitoring, information and data driven decision making and understanding of the value of nature then the decisions can start to be made in a bit more of a sustainable way.

Our readers are primarily students, how can they get involved in these projects or natural capital in general?

My first thing to say would be to become a member of Natural Capital Ireland. It’s free and when you sign up you get newsletters, information about events, and access to resources. So that’s one way to just get more involved. In terms of getting hands on involved in projects, volunteering or getting in touch with the people running these projects and asking questions. We are always looking to engage and involve new people in these projects. The next generation is much better informed and much more motivated. The other thing that students can do is spread the message, talk to people, your parents, your friends, get the message out there that this isn’t any longer just a load of hippies hugging trees, it’s real and it’s important to everyone in their daily lives. Being in daily lives everyone can behave a bit more environmentally responsibly by thinking about your actions, the same as natural capital accounting, when we have the full data we can make better decisions. Just think about actions, what you’re eating, how you’re consuming, and how you’re traveling. There’s lots that students can do.

If anybody wants to get in touch then the natural capital ireland email is info@naturalcapitalireland.com. Please reach out!

“What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.” -Dr. Jane Goodall