Research and application of GEP------China's experience in natural capital accounting---a review

Under the background of global climate change and the human activities, the stock of natural capital and the the ability of ecosystem services are facing increasing pressure, and the contradiction between natural capital protection and people’s livelihood development is also increasing. Therefore, it is urgent to integrate ecosystem value estimation into the development decision-making of countries all over the world. As a new ecosystem research method, ecosystem gross product (GEP) accounting is widely used in China, and often used to reflect the effectiveness of regional ecological protection and the coordination relationship between development and protection. We found that : (1) GEP accounting can reflect the overall situation of ecological environment and service quality, and help decision-makers and managers formulate and implement sustainable development strategies and ecological protection policies. (2) The contradiction between the depletion of global ecosystem capital and the development of people’s livelihood continues to intensify. About 68.7% of developing countries facing “low-low development model” (low GEP and low GDP). (3) We have constructed the path model of GEP working system and the path model of ecological protection compensation mechanism in China. The GEP accounting system of “from point to area, from top to bottom”, the parallel evaluation strategy of GDP and GEP and the comprehensive ecological compensation system of “vertical and horizontal combination” implemented can be popularized to countries all over the world.

Distributional Issues in Natural Capital Accounting: An Application to Land Ownership and Ecosystem Services in Scotland

Accounting for ecosystems is increasingly central to natural capital accounting. What is missing from this, however, is an answer to questions about how natural capital is distributed. That is, who consumes ecosystem services and who owns or manages the underlying asset(s) that give rise to ecosystem services. In this paper, we examine the significance of the ownership of land on which ecosystem assets (or ecosystem types) is located in the context of natural capital accounting. We illustrate this in an empirical application to two ecosystem services and a range of ecosystem types and land ownership in Scotland, a context in which land reform debates are longstanding. Our results indicate the relative importance of private land in ecosystem service supply, rather than land held by the public sector. We find relative concentration of ownership for land providing comparatively high amounts of carbon sequestration. For air pollution removal, however, the role of smaller to medium sized, mostly privately owned, land holdings closer to urban settlements becomes more prominent. The contributions in this paper, we argue, represent important first steps in anticipating distributional impacts of natural capital (and related) policy in natural capital accounts as well as connecting these frameworks to broader concerns about wealth disparities across and within countries.

Natural Capital Accounting Informing Water Management Policies in Europe

In the European Union, the Water Framework Directive provides a roadmap for achieving good water status and sustainable water usage, and a framework for the information, types of analysis, and interventions required by the Member States. Lack of previous knowledge in, and understanding of, interdisciplinary approaches across European countries has led to applications of corrective measures that have yielded less than favourable results. The natural capital paradigm, the assessment and monitoring of the value of natural capital, has the potential to convey information on the use of water resources and improve the connection between implemented measures and changes in the status of the resources, thus enhancing the effectiveness of policy interventions. In this paper, we present the natural capital accounting methodology, adapted to the requirements of the Directive, and demonstrate its application in two European catchments. Using economic methods, the asset value of two ecosystem services was estimated and associated with changes in water status due to policy instruments. Findings demonstrate that the asset value of water for residential consumption and recreational purposes fluctuates from year to year, influenced by current and future uses. Consequently, managing authorities should consider both current and emerging pressures when designing interventions to manage water resource sustainably.