Making the Case for Nature: insights from Scotland's Natural Capital analyses

Glossary

Ecosystem Restoration: The range of benefits people can derive from natural capital such as timber, carbon sequestration and recreation.

Ecosystem Service: The range of benefits people can derive from natural capital such as timber, carbon sequestration and recreation.

Provisioning Services: Products extracted, harvested or derived from nature, such as food, water, energy and materials.

Regulating Services: Help to maintain the quality of the environment we rely upon, from the regulation of natural processes such as air quality regulation, climate regulation and natural hazard regulation.

Cultural Services: Non-material benefits or ecosystem services we obtain from ecosystems through recreation, tourism and the associated health benefits.

Supporting Services: Ecosystem services necessary for the production and maintenance of all other ecosystem services. For example: soil formation and retention, nutrient cycling, water cycling and provisioning of habitat.

Expenditure: A payment to purchase either goods or services.

Gross Domestic Product: GDP is a measure of the size of an economy based on the production of goods and services in a country or region during a particular period of time. It is measured in three different ways: production (or output), expenditure and income.

Gross Value Added (GVA): Measure of the gross value added to the economy by each producing unit in Scotland; broadly, it is the sum of each company’s outputs (sales) less inputs (purchases).

GVA = GDP + subsidies on products - taxes on products.

Economic output: The quantity of goods or services produced, in a given time period, by a firm, industry, or country.

Inclusive Wealth: Inclusive wealth is a broad measure of the assets in the UK from income is derived.

Natural Capital: The renewable and non-renewable stocks of natural assets, including geology, soil, air, water, plants and animals that combine to yield a flow of benefits to people. Adopting a natural capital approach enables us to understand the role of our natural environment, alongside its intrinsic value, as an asset that underpins our economy and society.

Natural Capital Accounting: The attempt to bring a systematic, standardised and repeatable framework to recording information on natural capital and the services it provides, whether or not those services have a market value [DEFRA Enabling a Natural Capital Approach (ENCA)].

Natural Capital Approach: An approach to policy and decision making which considers the value of the natural environment for people and the economy.

Renewable: Resources that can be exploited indefinitely, provided the rate of exploitation does not exceed the rate of replacement, allowing stocks to rebuild (assuming no other significant disturbances). Renewable resources exploited faster than they can renew themselves may effectively become non-renewable, for example, when over-harvesting drives species extinct.

Non-renewable: Resources that will not regenerate after exploitation within any useful time period.