Title: The ecosystem contribution to tourism and outdoor leisure
Client: Defra and The Office of National Statistics
Year: 2019
Service area(s): natural capital accounting
Country/Region: UK
eftec team: Ian Dickie, Jake Kuyer, Natalya Kharadi, Patricia Yagüe-Garcia
About the Project:
Conservative estimates show nature contributes over £22 billion to the UK economy through tourism and outdoor leisure activities every year, representing 1% of UK GDP.
This is the headline finding from our natural capital account published as part of the ongoing Defra and the ONS programme on national natural capital accounts.
To produce these accounts, we developed an innovative approach to apportion the overall tourism expenditure to ecosystems and spatially disaggregate this share.
The results highlight the dependence of tourism, which is one of the largest and fastest growing sectors globally, on nature. Findings are intended to support public and private sector decisions about maintaining and enhancing natural capital to help sustain the tourism sector as well as other benefits from nature.
Client feedback:
“eftec bring to the table vast experience in the environmental economics field and work professionally and to a high standard.”
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), 2020