Natural Capital Accounts for Scotland: Agriculture Sector Accounts

The aim of this report is to explore the biophysical data sources available to produce spatially disaggregated natural capital accounts for the agriculture sector in Scotland. The motivation is the interest in natural capital accounting across a range of end users and scales, from highly aggregate national level accounts to the small scale such as catchments (as a natural biophysical unit) or individual land holdings (as a natural economic unit). End users across these scales range from national government and agencies, with an interest in determining the sustainability of the sector, to individual land managers for whom accounting may inform decision-making.

A further motivation is to better match data on the supply and demand for the ecosystem services produced by the natural capital assets under the management of the agriculture sector. Spatial disaggregation is an important consideration in this respect, as supply and demand may not be spatially matched, although this will vary across different ecosystem services.