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The Importance of Natural Capital to the Scottish Economy


Title: The Importance of Natural Capital to the Scottish Economy


Client: Scottish Government


Year: Released 2024


Service area: Accounting for Natural capital  and Appraisal


eftec team: Karli Jeffery, Paul Chung, Ian Dickie


Links: full report  and press release



About the project

Eftec and WSP UK were engaged by the Scottish Government to assess the importance of natural capital to Scotland’s economy and the sectors that are highly dependent on it.


The report, “The Importance of Natural Capital to the Scottish Economy”, finds that Scotland’s natural capital supports over £40 billion in total economic output: equivalent to over 14% of the economy and 261,000 jobs.


This report also finds:

  • The industries most dependent on natural capital included are agriculture, fishing and aquaculture (88% reliant), forestry and wood products (59%), water and wastewater management (40%), spirits / wine and beer / malt sectors (30%), and electricity (30%);

  • The Highlands & Islands and Glasgow City Regional Economic Partnership (REP) areas have the largest shares of output and employment reliant on natural capital; and

  • The Highlands & Islands, Tay Cities, and South of Scotland REPs have a high share of key habitats in Scotland providing ecosystem services worth around £2 billion in output for all economic sectors in the Scottish economy.


eftec’s role in the project was to develop a three-step methodology to define how the Scottish economy depends on natural capital. The first step identified the sectors that directly rely on natural capital, or ‘core natural capital industries’. The second step determined the extent that other sectors rely on these core sectors using expenditure data from Scottish National Accounts. In an experimental approach, the third step used an index based on the ENCORE database to evaluate the dependence of industry processes on a broad range of ecosystem services.


The figure from the report at the top of this page shows the regional economic importance of Scotland’s natural capital You can read the full report and press release here.





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