Environment and Rural Affairs Monitoring & Modelling Programme - ERAMMP Year 1 Report 24: Welsh national natural capital accounts - Ecosystem service accounts for woodland, farmland and freshwater habitats

This report presents 7 service accounts, containing estimates of the quantity and value of services being supplied by Welsh natural capital in woodland, farmland, and freshwater broad habitats. These services include food, water, air filtration and recreation. Farmland is the largest of these three Welsh habitats, at 1,015,693 hectares, followed by woodland at 268,588 hectares (125,117 broadleaf and 143,471 coniferous), and freshwater at 42,309 hectares. The value of the stock of Welsh natural capital in woodland, farmland, and freshwater was estimated to be approximately £30.5 billion in 2014. This is a partial value and the true value is expected to be significantly higher than this figure as only 7 of the benefits received from natural capital in Wales are currently measured. Some notable examples of ecosystem services which aren’t currently measured are flood protection, hydropower, and tourism. Of the services measured, 76% of this value was attributable to intangible services not traditionally captured in GDP (recreation, pollution removal and carbon sequestration). This construction of accounts for Welsh habitats is necessary for potential future commissioning of work to exploit the many condition indicators relevant to provisioning and regulating services which come from the ongoing national monitoring programme Welsh Government has funded through the GMEP and ERAMMP programmes. These condition metrics are particularly important for assessing the underpinning resilience of ecosystems to sudden shocks. Examples include change in soil condition - increases in soil pH over time; variable trends in soil carbon - with increases in woodland and losses in Mountain, Moor and Heath habitats; and condition indicators relevant to cultural services (recreation) which show improvement in the condition of footpaths and public rights of way over time. Other condition metrics include indicators of diversity and connectivity. The accounts reported here reflect a Welsh-data focus for three habitats. A broader set of ecosystem service accounts would benefit from inclusion of other habitats such as mountain moors and heaths, and urban and coastal accounts. The potential to link to environmental monitoring, such as the new indicators developed under the Environmental and Rural Affairs Monitoring and Modelling Programme (ERAMMP) and National Survey questions should also be explored further. This will particularly benefit measures of habitat condition, which are not typically represented in the reporting of many natural capital accounts. With resource rent residual value methods in valuing many ecosystem service flows, geographical breakdowns of Natural Capital accounts, such as Welsh ecosystem service accounts, currently rely upon apportioning UK national accounts. Further development work should take place to investigate other possible valuation methodologies outlined in the System of Environmental Economic Accounting (SEEA) Experimental Ecosystem Accounting