Scottish Natural Capital Accounts: 2023

Overview

• This report looks at the extent of the seven terrestrial habitats in Scotland and three different elements of natural capital – the value of the assets, the annual flow of services that these assets provide, and the value of these annual services.
• Natural capital accounts are reported under three service categories – provisioning services that create products such as food, water and minerals, regulating services such as air pollution removal and carbon sequestration, and cultural services such as the recreational use of nature.
• These estimates are experimental statistics and remain under development. Estimates are continually revised to produce the best statistics with the available data and methods. As a result, this latest account cannot be compared with previous years accounts on a like-for-like basis.
• Several ecosystem services are not being measured in this article, such as flood mitigation, so the monetary accounts should be interpreted as a partial or minimum value of Scottish natural capital.
• The Office for National Statistics (ONS) produces the UK natural capital accounts, and with funding from the Scottish government, has produced this set of Scotland accounts.[1]