Collaboration, climate and natural capital: Supporting decision-making under conditions of uncertainty

Description

Land-based initiatives to meet climate change targets require a cross-scalar approach to ensure good understandings of complex social, ecological and institutional interactions. Meeting climate objectives therefore relies on effective collaboration that bridges scales and sectors, in a way that co-produces knowledge and informs advocacy at multiple policy levels. However, partnership working can amplify longstanding land use governance issues and requires understanding of the complex interconnections between drivers of land use change and management. Recognising this complexity, a natural capital approach to making decisions is gaining academic and political traction to support stakeholders who need to work together to negotiate future land use change. The approach recognises both the value of the natural assets affected and the impacts and dependencies on these assets associated with the decision being made.

To inform new regional partnerships in Scotland that are using a natural capital approach, we review decision-making frameworks that have been applied to land-based initiatives working with natural capital, with a particular focus on the Natural Capital Protocol. Using insights from stakeholder theory, we compare these and propose an integrated analytical framework that can be used in practice by partnerships to facilitate more effective decision-making around natural capital under conditions of uncertainty.

This seminar reported on work on the natural capital approach conducted by the team at SRUC in 2021/22 for ClimateXChange.

Period	17 Feb 2022
Held at	Uppsala University, Sweden
Degree of Recognition	International