Natural Capital In A Nordic Context

Abstract: The report reviews different international approaches for natural capital accounting. The five approaches reviewed are attempts to help create an improved evidence base on the links between biodiversity and ecosystems on the one hand and economic and human wellbeing on the other in view of better informing decision-making in a variety of contexts. The strengths and weaknesses of the approaches are evaluated in the light of the policy goals, institutions and conditions in the Nordic countries. The analysis has been carried out during the period September 2012 - January 2013 by Gaia Consulting Oy and the Institute of European Environmental Policy. The project was commissioned by the Nordic Council of Ministers

Current indicators of economic growth (e.g., GDP) do not adequately consider sustainability, while environmental indicators alone fail to acknowledge the economic needs of a society. Natural Capital Accounting (NCA) can be the tool that fills the gap separating current economic and environmental indicators. Development of NCA has progressed considerably and is being widely deployed in the Nordic countries, but development and deployment remain uneven. This report provides background on NCA and its associated accounting frameworks, demonstrates the applicability of NCA for sustainably utilizing freshwater resources in the Nordic Arctic and provides recommendations for maximizing the value of environmental accounting as an economic, environmental, and sustainable development tool.

Current indicators of economic growth (e.g., GDP) do not adequately consider sustainability, while environmental indicators alone fail to acknowledge the economic needs of a society. Natural Capital Accounting (NCA) can be the tool that fills the gap separating current economic and environmental indicators but development and adoption remains uneven across the Nordic region. This policy brief provides background on NCA and its associated accounting frameworks, demonstrates the applicability of NCA for sustainably utilizing freshwater resources in the Nordic Arctic and provides recommendations for maximizing the value of environmental accounting as an economic, environmental, and sustainable development tool.

Nature provides us with a multitude of goods like food and fiber, drinking water, protection against floods and storms, carbon storage and recreational services like swimming and bird watching. Our welfare and well-being depend on these goods and services – often called ecosystem services, defined as “the benefit people directly and indirectly obtain from nature”. We often distinguish between four categories of ecosystem services; supporting, provisioning, regulating and cultural ecosystem services. This report aims to sum up and show some examples of the results of the ecosystem services projects carried out for NCM. It illustrates which ecosystem services we receive from Nordic nature and the importance of these. It also shows examples of how the ecosystem services approach has been and can be used in management of nature in the Nordic countries, and to point out some knowledge gaps.

Cultural ecosystem services in the form of experiences derived from landscapes are potentially important, but often overlooked. Given the large and unprecedented landscape changes many of the Nordic countries are undergoing, there is a need to find ways of including people’s preferences and the value of landscape impacts in policy assessments and decision-making processes. The project aim has been to synthesize knowledge about the magnitude and value of landscape experiences, and investigate current practices and examples of how landscape impacts are incorporated (or not) in policy assessments and decision-making contexts in the Nordics. The literature demonstrates potentially high unaccounted welfare loss from landscape change. We find clear weaknesses in current practices, that a second phase will try to address. The project was carried out by Vista Analysis in Oslo and Department of Environmental Science at Aarhus University from 2014–15.

https://pub.norden.org/temanord2022-562/ The world is currently facing a biodiversity and climate crisis which are globally interlinked. Nature-based solutions (NBS), defined as “actions to protect, sustainably manage, and restore natural and modified ecosystems that address societal challenges effectively and adaptively, simultaneously benefiting people and nature” is part of the solution to these challenges. Here we give a status overview of nature-based solutions in the Nordic countries, obtained within the S-ITUATION project focusing on 1) what is the current status of research on NBS in the Nordic countries? 2) what policy framework(s) exist for NBS in the Nordic countries? 3) what challenges do Nordic countries experience in the process of mainstreaming NBS? 4) what key examples of projects implementing NBS exist in the Nordic countries? We have done this using several approaches: 1) a review of the academic literature, providing insights on the status of research on NBS in the Nordic countries; 2) a grey literature review in each Nordic country, to describe the policy framework for NBS and practical implementation of NBS projects across the Nordic countries; 3) compilation of a Nordic NBS case projects catalogue, which contains implemented case projects from each Nordic country, using NBS in all major ecosystems: terrestrial (forests and agricultural land), freshwater, coastal and marine, to show the breadth of NBS used in the Nordic countries, 4) Nordic NBS stakeholder consultations. Research on NBS across the Nordics includes several research initiatives. Currently the most central research initiatives are the Nordic Council of Ministers programme on NBS, which is a focused four-year programme. Many Nordic universities and research institutes are also involved in different research projects focusing on or including NBS and there is an exponential interest from researchers in this area. Most of these research projects are targeting NBS in urban areas. In a structured peer-review of scientific publications using the term ‘nature-based solutions’, 64 research papers were found related to the Nordic countries. These studies varied from large-scale ecosystem-based approaches to small-scale NBS. Most of the studies assessed the NBS functions in relation to biophysical qualities, such as water retention capacity, flood risk reduction, health benefits and biodiversity contribution, but there were also studies focusing on potential economic benefits from NBS. Regarding policy frameworks it is evident that these are at different stages of development when it comes to mainstreaming the concept of NBS into policy across the Nordics. Norway and Sweden have adopted the term to a larger degree than Denmark, Finland and Iceland. Still, all five countries conserve, restore and work actively on developing sustainable use of nature, but use other terms (e.g., ‘blue-green infrastructures or solutions’, ‘restoration’, or ‘ecosystem services’) in their policies and guidelines. NBS governance and implementation is an area that is currently advancing rapidly. At the same time, there are still several challenges as well as also opportunities for using NBS to mitigate and adapt to climate change, protect biodiversity and ensure human well-being. Regarding challenges and gaps, we divide these into 1) natural-scientific and technical knowledge gaps, 2) economic shortcomings, 3) regulatory, governance, and policy challenges, and 4) weak stakeholder collaboration. In the project we have identified 54 key examples of projects implementing NBS in the Nordic countries. Most of these cases were related to freshwater, followed by urban/artificial NBS. The number of implemented NBS projects has increased, especially in the last couple of years. Our key messages and recommendations for future mainstreaming of NBS are: 1) clear political prioritization is needed to mainstream NBS into policy and practice, 2) appropriate institutional structures, procedures and policy instruments at all governance levels are essential to facilitate the implementation of NBS, 3) better funding structures for NBS are needed, 4) we need to develop common standards, long-term monitoring and better cost-benefit evaluations of NBS, and 5) the knowledge base in all phases of NBS projects needs to be strengthened.

In 2013, the Nordic Ministers for the Environment decided to strenghten the measurement of green estimates of welfare and socio-economic developments. The report Making the Environment Count is describing how statistics on the environment and the economy thorugh the System of Environmental-Economic Accounts can be used to enable cross-sectorial analysis. The report proposes indicators that can be compiled annually in a Nordic context through existing statistics linking economic statistics to environmental statistics.