Review of the evidence supporting the provision and resilience of ecosystem services of select marine habitats and species.

Project Background

Growing interest in marine natural capital has highlighted the need to better understand the provision and flow of marine ecosystem services from marine habitats and species. Knowledge of which habitats exist, which organisms inhabit these and, the processes performed by those organisms, can be of economic, ecological and cultural value.

In recent years there has been an increased focus within both UK policy and science on the concept of Natural Capital and the services and benefits that flow from this. JNCC is working to develop the evidence base within the marine environment where significant evidence gaps exist.

A Natural Capital approach requires different users and sectors to have access to evidence and evidence products such as Natural Capital accounts, asset and risk registers. They will need robust, flexible and usable evidence with known confidence and propriety to make informed decisions. To gather and manipulate data anew for each project would be wasteful and risk multiplying error.

The Natural Capital Committee defines Natural Capital as "The elements of nature that directly or indirectly produce value to people, including ecosystems, species, freshwater, land, minerals, the air and oceans, as well as natural processes and functions." (Natural Capital Committee, 2014). Sustainable use of natural resources can yield significant benefits to society and so appropriate management of these assets and consideration in decision making are essential for these to be realised. The Committee was established to advise UK Government on matters relating to Natural Capital which has been done through a series of reports and recommendations which have fed into the development of the Defra 25 Year Environment Plan (Defra, 2018). The Committee advises that natural capital assets need to be identified to provide a baseline from which to monitor changes in natural capital assets and their potential to provide services and benefits to inform decision making.

The benefits derived from assets in this context are those benefits provided to society which may be are affected by the quantity, quality or location of the underpinning asset. Developing an understanding of these assets will expand the information resource available for assessments based on natural capital and to inform sustainable management decisions that in turn will help support the improvement and restoration marine ecosystems. Availability and use of such tools will be foundational to achieving the goals of the 25 Year Environment Plan.

JNCC is developing a practical framework of standardised, multi-purpose Evidence Products to meet this need, which together will provide a reliable foundation for Marine Natural Capital (mNC) assessment work at different scales and for different uses. These cover ecosystem service provision, asset status and metadata among others.

These Evidence Products are foundational and will be developed iteratively, refined and improved over t

Additional information: You are invited by JNCC Support Co (JNCC) to submit a tender for the supply of works or services required under the above project. If interested, you should download and carefully read the documents contained within the zip file or following the link to download documents https://jncc.gov.uk/about-jncc/corporate-information/procurement/procurement-opportunity-c19-0370-1409/.