Natural England has published a major new report warning that urgent action is needed now to restore nature and place it at the heart of decision making processes.

The  State of Natural Capital Report provides a comprehensive assessment of the state of our ecosystem assets, such as wetlands and forests, the important role they play in sustaining us - and the risks to society and the economy if the status quo is maintained.

The report is warning that due to the state of England’s natural capital, society and the economy face substantial risks, for example:

• degraded peatlands and damaged seabeds can release huge carbon stores.
• declines in nature make the impacts of climate change worse, including flooding and soaring urban temperatures
• loss of pollinators is a threat to the crops which depend on them.

The report is calling for the risks to be tackled head-on by decision makers, saying that society has taken nature and its benefits for granted, resulting in decisions that cause damage to nature and increases risks for the economy and society.

With many seemingly unrelated decisions impacting on nature, the report says we need to make natural capital central to decision making, even where the decisions aren’t specifically about natural capital.

The report makes clear the significant place nature has on the balance sheet with changes being felt in the economy now due to nature depletion, and the consequences already being seen in the reduction in access to nature.

Key findings include:

• Because our ecosystem assets are degraded, they are less able to cope with the impact of future change. Our assets are already very highly impacted by land and sea-use change, pollution, natural resource use and exploitation and climate change. There is currently a very rapid increase in the severity of impacts of climate change, associated invasive species (including pests and diseases) and land and sea-use change. This puts the assets and benefits we rely on at risk.
• All of our ecosystem assets, and almost all the benefits they provide, are at high or medium-high risk:
• Assets at high risk: marine; coastal margins; freshwaters and wetlands; mountains moorlands and heaths; woodlands.
• Assets at medium-high risk: semi-natural grasslands; enclosed farmland; urban.
• Benefits at high risk: timber and other wood products; produce from the sea; plentiful water; reared animals and their outputs; clean water; erosion control; flood protection; thriving plants and wildlife; cultural benefits.
• Benefits at medium-high risk: cultivated crops; clean air; urban cooling; noise regulation; pollination; pest and disease control.

Priority actions and opportunities

According to the report, there are three main ways to reduce risk to natural capital:

• Restore ecosystems.
• Reduce impacts of drivers of change.
• Make natural capital central to decision-making.
• Priority actions: the image below shows priority actions to tackle risk to natural capital, through restoring ecosystems and reducing impacts of drivers.
• The report identifies priority actions for policy areas and ecosystem assets, setting out priority opportunities to bring natural capital into decision-making, including:
• Embed priority actions in emerging policy development.
• Apply Nature-related Financial Disclosure in companies’ and financial institutions’ risk management.
• Promote private and public investment in large-scale ecosystem creation and restoration.
• Put natural capital at the heart of land- and sea-use planning.
• Avoid sectoral financial support which drives risk to ecosystem assets.
• Fill evidence and data gaps and make information available to inform decision making.
• Invest in regular and ongoing monitoring of indicators for assessing change.
• Continue the development and implementation of natural capital accounts.
• Go beyond GDP and include assessment of natural capital, as one of the stocks in an assessment of national wealth.

The report says we need to act now - asset restoration becomes more challenging over time and may not be achievable. The costs of acting later are substantially greater than the costs of acting now. 

 Speaking at an event to launch the report, Tony Juniper, Chair of Natural England, said:

“Nature isn’t different from growth – it’s at the heart of it, you cannot grow the economy if we don’t grow nature. According to recent estimates the current value of the UK’s natural wealth was just over £1.5 trillion.

“Nature is our national wealth service: our natural assets provide a steady stream of essential goods and benefits on which our economy and our population rely.

“For years now we have taken more from Nature than it can supply sustainably. We are in effect running down our assets as we strip away nature’s ability to provide clean water and carbon storage by degrading soils, which increases water pollution and sends harmful emissions into the atmosphere, affecting human health and adding to consumer bills – be it your weekly shop or household bills.

“It’s time we treasured this national wealth service as much as we do the National Health Service. We must move beyond just seeing the health of our economy and our country in terms of pure GDP, we have to incorporate the health of our natural capital and its ability to sustain our economy into our understanding of the condition of our nation.”

The report is published alongside a new risk register, which investigates the threats nature faces, and how they could impact on a range of policy areas, such as the push for net zero, climate adaptation, food security, water security and health, and setting out the actions that need to be taken to address these risks to nature and the benefits it provides.

Click here to download the report in full