Climate Crisis

Farmers should back national accounting system on value of nature, conference told

Mechanism would support farmers and ‘reward them for being custodians of our natural environment’

Lodge Bog, which is being restored by the Irish Peatland Conservation Council, in Lullymore, Co Kildare. Photograph: Paulo Nunes dos Santos/The New York Times

Kevin O'Sullivan
Tue Mar 12 2024 - 16:25

Irish farmers should back widespread adoption of a national accounting system that recognises the value of nature, as it will ensure they are better rewarded for their efforts in protecting biodiversity, according to botanist Prof Jane Stout of Trinity College Dublin.

Speaking at a conference in Dublin on Tuesday hosted by the National Economic and Social Council on the benefits of “natural capital accounting” (NCA), Ms Stout said this system would illustrate all the values that come from farmland beyond food production.

It would provide a mechanism for supporting farmers “for all of those multiple values and reward them for being custodians of our natural environment”, the founder of Natural Capital Ireland added.

“Farmers know what’s on their land, they know the value of their land, they know how to manage it. They just haven’t been recognised and rewarded for that in the past. So this is one way to do that,” she said.

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The conference heard NCA is a powerful tool and information system for nature designed to quantify changes in the stock and condition of ecosystems, including vital resources such as rivers and forests. It incorporates environmental data and mapping, and feeds these elements in national economic accounts, while valuing the benefits nature provides – including clean air, water and biodiversity. The event also heard how it could help equip Ireland in addressing nature loss and the climate crisis.

“We started this journey 10 years ago ... we saw exactly that we needed to bring together the policymakers and the practitioners, break down those academic disciplinary silos and bring everyone together for this to work,” Dr Stout added. “We had a vision back then. We didn’t know how to do it ... we developed the methods – 10 years later, we need to see the action so we need to see it happening.”

“We know the state of nature is fairly perilous ... Until now most of our decisions have been made on financial costs and benefits. If we really want to have sustainable and holistic decision making then we need to bring this all together and natural capital accounting gives us that framework.

“It also allows us to understand what the state of nature is ... but then what it’s delivering to humanity. So it’s that way of connecting the natural system with the social and the economic system. That’s value of it,” she said.

Nesc considers NCA to be an important part of the solution in working more closely with nature and shining a light on “how this tool and information system can increasingly inform the [national] policy system”, said its director Dr Larry O’Connell.

NCA provided a systemic way to highlight both nature’s hidden risk and value “and bring them more clearly into view”, said Nesc policy analyst Jeanne Moore. “You build the visibility of ecosystem services and their contribution to society and the economy in biophysical and monetary terms, and our total dependency on their healthy spaces for our lives and livelihoods,” Ms Moore said.

Nesc is supporting development of guidelines for using NCA in decision making, which will help to develop and enable integration of the system with economic accounts, including production of “a risk register of ecosystems”, she said.

Kevin O'Sullivan

Kevin O'Sullivan

Kevin O'Sullivan is Environment and Science Editor and former editor of The Irish Times

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