Introduction

This short publication aims to highlight key Scottish data from the UK natural capital accounts: 2024, which are produced by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

The Natural Capital Accounts (NCAs) take a range of ecosystem services and attempt to value, in monetary terms, the benefits they bring to society. These include:

• Provisioning services - material outputs such as fish, timber, fossil fuels
• Regulating services - that help to maintain the quality of the environment, such as greenhouse gas regulation, air pollution removal and noise mitigation
• Cultural services - such as recreation, tourism and aesthetics

There are three main metrics in the NCAs:

• Annual values measure the flow of ecosystem services in a given year
• Physical flow measures the output of an ecosystem service in non-monetary units, for example, tonnes of fish or number of tourism visits. 
• Asset values measure the stock of ecosystem services and take into consideration their future expected supply

Data is presented up to 2022, the most recent year for which data for all ecosystem services is available.

The NCAs should be interpreted as a partial or minimum value of the services provided by the natural environment. This is because the ONS are currently unable to monetise many important services such as flood protection, biodiversity, pollination, or water quality management from natural resources.

Note that a higher value of an ecosystem service within the NCAs does not necessarily mean a better policy outcome. For instance, consider removal of air pollution by vegetation: if there was no pollution then there would be no need for vegetation to remove it.

The NCAs are complementary to Scotland's Natural Capital Asset Index (a National Performance Framework indicator) and economic data provided by recent Scottish Government research ‘Natural capital - importance to the Scottish economy: research’.

An official statistics in development publication for Scotland

These statistics are official statistics in development. Official statistics in development may be new or existing statistics, and will be tested with users, in line with the standards of trustworthiness, quality, and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics.

Scottish Government statistics are regulated by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR). OSR sets the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value that all producers of official statistics should adhere to.

More information about Scottish Government statistics is available on the Scottish Government website.