The importance of natural capital to the Scottish economy: research

Glossary

the non-material benefits we obtain from ecosystems through recreation, tourism and the associated health benefits. (Scottish Government, 2023a)

the contributions of ecosystems to economic and other human activity. (Scottish Government, 2023a) For the broad ecosystem service types, see provisioning services, regulating services and cultural services.

measure of the value of all goods and services produced by an economy or economic unit, usually over the course of a year, measured using three different approaches: output, income and expenditure. (Scottish Parliament, 2013)

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). (Scottish Government, 2023b)

GVA = GDP + subsidies on products - taxes on products

framework consisting of three types of tables: supply tables, use tables and symmetric input-output tables; the tables provide a complete picture of the flows of goods and services (products) in the Scottish onshore economy for a given year and detail the relationship between producers and consumers and the interdependencies of industries. (Scottish Government, 2023b)

the environmental resources (e.g., plants, animals, air, water, soils) that combine to yield a flow of benefits to people. (Scottish Government, 2020)

where an economic activity is dependent on an ecosystem service in its value chain, including receiving material inputs, moderation of wastes and operating conditions, and customer motivations.

resources that will not regenerate after exploitation within any useful time period. (Natural Capital Protocol, 2016)

products extracted, harvested or derived from nature, such as food, water, energy and materials. (Scottish Government, 2023a)

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. (Scottish Government, 2023a)

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. (Natural Capital Protocol, 2016)

system for grouping economic activities using the operating establishment as the basic production unit. The SIC system assigns each establishment an industry code on the basis of its primary activity, which is the establishment’s principal product or group of products produced or distributed or services rendered. (Cambridge Econometrics, 2008)

the Supply Table provides estimates of the output of a large number of differentiated products by each industry and the Use Table provides estimates of the inputs (of products) used by each industry to produce their own output. (Scottish Government, 2023)

the end-to-end process of creating products and delivering them to customers. (Scottish Parliament, 2022)