Review of approaches for the assessment of marine Natural Capital in the context of UK marine environmental policy and management

The policy and regulations governing marine environmental assessment, monitoring and management are founded in the application of the Ecosystem Approach1, e.g. UK Marine Policy Statement, UK Marine Strategy (2019), OSPAR, marine plans. An Ecosystem Approach requires equitable consideration of environmental, social and economic issues. The 25 Year Environment Plan (25YEP) (2021) recognises that the full value of the benefits offered by the environment and cultural heritage needs to be assessed in order to make appropriate choices on sustainable use of natural resources. The Dasgupta Review (2021) stresses the importance of the assessment of Natural Capital in the management of biodiversity and the sustainable use of natural resources. Taking a natural capital approach (as part of the Ecosystem Approach) allows the environment its due regard as a natural asset and contributor to the overall economy and societal wellbeing. Whilst application of the natural capital approach on land is developing at pace, challenges remain to applying it to the marine environment. A number of organisations have picked up the challenge and developed, independently, solutions in the form of case studies, pilots, interpretation of existing evidence, conceptual frameworks, methods and tools. At this stage it is considered beneficial to evaluate the piecemeal marine natural capital assessment approaches that have been developed to date, to identify the most promising and make recommendations for a common approach, which could be used if appropriate; and further to inform the development of future work.

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