Natural Environment Valuation Online (NEVO): Web-based tools for natural capital management and investment

While many businesses and public sector organisations understand that natural capital is an important direct and indirect source of socio-economic prosperity, quality of life, and well-being, they frequently lack the capacity to quantify those benefits in either physical or economic terms. Such capacity exists in the often sophisticated models developed by natural and economic scientists, but the power of such models to estimate the benefits of maintaining or enhancing natural capital stocks has generally been unavailable outside the academic community. Since evidence of the size of such benefits may be fundamental for informing decision making2 and shaping policy design, developing tools that support better accounting and valuation of natural capital has been identified as a key requirement in bringing the environment into to the heart of public and private sector decision making. The central objective of this proposal is to create such tools.
In particular, we will develop a web-based application that allows government, businesses, and the public to access the power of NERC-funded natural capital models through an easy-to-use map-based interface. This interface, the Natural Environment Valuation Online tool (NEVO), will allow users to explore and visualise the consequences of changes in natural capital management on flows of ecosystem services in the UK. In the first instance, NEVO will focus on quantifying and valuing carbon stored and absorbed by the natural environment and recreational uses associated with natural and semi-natural environments. Most importantly, NEVO will allow users to query the underpinning natural capital models in order to answer questions of their own design. To better understand the exact nature of those questions and so inform the development of NEVO, we will work closely with a number of partner organisations each of whom is engaged in the management and promotion of natural capital:
1. The Environment Analysis Unit at Defra, whose core interests include the development of tools to support the emerging 25 Year Plan for the Environment.
2. The Forestry Commission (FC), responsible for forestry in the UK, including administration of the Woodland Carbon Code, a voluntary code providing consistency, clarity and transparency in the accounting of woodland carbon projects.
3. Moor Trees, a charitable organisation dedicated to re-foresting Dartmoor with native trees and enabling people to re-engage with trees and natural environments.
4. Treeconomics, a social enterprise specialising in measuring and valuing the benefits of urban trees. Their mission is to raise awareness of the value of trees and woodlands as natural assets through engaging local people, businesses and public bodies in their projects.
5. GeoSmart Information Ltd, a data and services company that supports sustainable development together with a range of data products and innovative subscription services in areas of groundwater flood risk and sustainable drainage systems.
NEVO will be co-developed with this set of project partners ensuring their direct input in deciding upon the nature of the user interface, which variables users have control over in querying the model and how the outputs are visualised and recorded.
The project builds upon sophisticated models from NERC-funded natural and economic science including the National Ecosystem Assessment Follow On (NEA-FO) project and a Valuing Nature Network placement grant scoping user needs for natural capital tools. Moreover the project will build on the research team's experience delivering the Defra-funded proto-type Outdoor Recreation Valuation tool which has proved the feasibility of creating map-based web applications for natural capital valuation which are accessible to a broad audience (http://leep.exeter.ac.uk/ORVal).

Keywords: natural environment, valuation, carbon, recreation, tool, mapping, web-based,

The project has been designed to deliver outcomes in the form of improved and informed decision-making for long term strategic and investments decisions. This will be achieved by translating NERC science and presenting it in an intuitive, easy-to-use, visual format to a variety of end-users. The anticipated outcomes of the project include:
1. Improving and promoting the voluntary offsetting sector by providing an accessible and intuitive means for evaluating and targeting potential tree-planting investments using FC approved, standardised and transparent methods of calculating greenhouse gas flows.
2. Identification and visualisation of the benefits of potential new investments. This will enhance the ability of businesses (Treeconomics) and charitable organisations (Moor Trees) to calculate and communicate the benefits of their work to their stakeholders.
3. Improved targeting and efficiency of investments, and the strengthening of relationships with individual landowners.
4. Assistance for users, including GeoSmart Information Ltd customers, in identifying suitable locations for implementing natural flood defences whilst also delivering co-benefits in terms of recreation and carbon storage and sequestration.
5. Showcasing practical examples of the power of data and tool development, as advocated in Defra's 25 Year Environment Plan and providing a platform for innovation and communication. .
6. Enabling organisations to assess deprivation in relation to access to green space at local and national levels, and use this to inform and target investment decisions. The index of multiple deprivation is used widely by national and local organisations including government to assess where people may benefit from services and to target investments in the most deprived areas.
We anticipate that development of NEVO will generate outcomes not only for our project partners, but also for a broad range of end-users through further dissemination of the tool. For example, we believe that the tools will provide informative input into and improve participatory and deliberative events to support the development of catchment management plans and Pioneer projects under the 25 Year Environment Plan, facilitated through LEEP's close links with Defra and relevant regional stakeholders.