Natural Capital Accounting for Better Policy Decisions: Measuring and Valuing Natural Capital to Improve Landscape Management and Governance

Document Summary: 
The fourth Forum on Natural Capital Accounting for Better Policy Decisions met against the backdrop of alarming evidence that natural resources are under considerable pressure. Earlier in 2019, the Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services and the IPCC Report on Climate Change and Land had identified dramatic changes in land use as having the most negative impacts on nature. These reports had given rise to policy and media debates on a ‘nature emergency’ and calls for more integrated ways to manage landscapes under growing pressure. The theme for this year’s Forum was therefore very timely – measuring and valuing natural capital for improved landscape management. The Forum was co-organized by the World Bank, United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), the Government of Netherlands, and the Government of Uganda, and was held in Kampala on 18 and 19 November 2019. It brought together over 100 high-level participants including government representatives from developing and developed countries, as well as organizations working on Natural Capital Accounting (NCA), environmental and economic policy, and sustainable landscape management. The Forum explored the benefits of bringing Integrated Landscape Management (ILM) and NCA, and options for combining their significant potentials. To enable a rich discussion, a background paper on NCA and ILM by P BL (the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency) was circulated before the Forum (Chapter 2 in this report), along with a paper by the World Bank reflecting on the use and potential of NCA in its many landscape projects (Chapter 3).
Publication Year: 
2019
Document Type: