Natural Capital

The environment we live in is changing faster than ever before, and highlighted by increasing global temperatures and more frequent extreme weather events causing floods and droughts.

Given that 70% of the land area of the UK is under the ownership of farmers and landowners, the agribusiness sector is in a unique position to deliver and adopt practices and landscape-scale changes to mitigate these environmental challenges.

We are engaged on a number of fronts, working with Government, utilities companies, academia, private businesses, environmental organisations and local authorities in the design and trialling of practical approaches that allow natural capital accounting to become part of mainstream business discussions.  

We are focused on ensuring that the financial and economic returns from natural capital accounting are attractive and viable to incentivise uptake, whilst at the same time being aware of the importance and tradeoffs required.  

We offer services to identify and maximise income flows to farmers and landowners across all ecosystem services. 

These are typically categorised as: 

• Provisioning services, which involve producing food, timber, water supply and habitats to boost biodiversity
• Regulation services such as carbon capture and storage, pollination, water and air purification
• Cultural services which explore human-based benefits such as recreation, aesthetics, health and wellbeing

Our well-connected and highly experienced agribusiness consultants are able to help identify, develop and execute opportunities to increase your natural capital and build a more sustainable business. 

Key benefits for clients include:

• Helping you to avoid any pitfalls
• Reduced environmental footprints and increased biodiversity
• Generation of additional income for operating sustainably

Natural Capital

The environment we live in is changing faster than ever before. We are recognising this through events such as changing weather patterns, increases temperatures, water shortages or flooding. The need and urgency to address these changes will become increasingly important within government policies, regulation, social demand and market forces. 

70% of the land area of the UK is under the ownership of farmers and landowners and therefore is in a unique position to deliver and adopt individual practices and landscape scale change to mitigate these environmental challenges.

The potential is encapsulated within Natural Capital which consists of the stock of assets (soils, water, air, species, land cover) that can be used to deliver a public benefit.

Ecosystem services

The Natural Capital asset is transformed through an ecosystem service to deliver public goods. These services are often grouped as

• Provisioning services - producing food, timber, water supply, biodiversity habitats
• Regulation services - through maximizing environmental processes that regulate the environment such as climate regulation through carbon capture & storage, pollination, water and air purification
• Cultural services - people benefits such as recreation, aesthetics, health and well being.

Markets and income streams

The markets for these services are at various stages of development with both government and private sectors involved.

• Government initiatives are providing a market for biodiversity enhancements, carbon capture & water regulation through existing Countryside Stewardship Schemes and the pending ELMs schemes. 
• Woodland creation initiatives fund carbon capture as well as delivery of flood risk reduction, air quality and recreational benefits. 
• Utility companies are funding land management practices that benefit both water supply and water quality improvements. The private carbon market is developed for woodland and developing at pace for soil carbon. In the future markets will develop for pollination, biodiversity and other public benefits.    
• The emerging biodiversity enhancement mechanism is the requirement under the Environmental Bill for all new development to develop a 10% net gain providing application for landowners to deliver this gain through environmental enhancement associating significant income stream potential.

There will be significant opportunity (indeed necessity) for our farming client base to embrace and respond to the Natural Capital agenda. This will represent a range of new income stream areas for many farmers.  The ability to access these new income streams will require engagement across a wider front for most. 

Brown&Co services

We are already engaged on a number of fronts working with Government, Utility companies, Academia, private businesses, environmental organisations and local authorities in the design and trialing of practical approaches that allow Natural Capital accounting to become part of our mainstream business discussions.  We are focused on ensuring that the financial and economic returns from Natural Capital accounting are attractive and viable to incentivise uptake whilst at the same time aware of the importance and tradeoffs required.  

We offer services to identify and maximise income flows to farmers and landowners across all ecosystems services including biodiversity net gain, environmental enhancements, water quality and carbon.