IFB Leader, Dr Hannah Rudman, Senior Research Fellow at the James Hutton Institute, has been appointed co-Chair of the Scottish Forum on Natural Capital. She joined the Forum in 2020 and turned her professional focus and energy to nature positive solutions for the climate emergency and biodiversity crisis. Hannah has been a co-lead of the Forum's Nature Finance Pioneers Hub since its early days, when it was a network of 80 people from 30 organisations. Now it is over 775 people from ~230 organisations.
What is the Scottish Forum on Natural Capital?
The Forum started in 2014, after Scotland hosted the Inaugural World Forum on Natural Capital. Way back in the early days, Hannah was the "young SME representative" in the Scottish Government's 2020 Climate Group convened by Ian Marchant, and Dame Susan Rice, which was the Forum's precursor.
In 2023, the membership collective agreed that that Forum’s activities should identify and showcase natural capital solutions;
- supporting collaboration across business, finance, government and society, and
- fostering shared understanding of natural capital mechanisms and the financial, policy, scientific and social evidence.
The Hubs are doing this whilst consistently growing, and actively leading the forum’s outputs and impacts.
What is the vision for the Scottish Forum on Natural Capital?
In 2024, we face a number of challenges that must be met by 2023;
- restoring 30% of land and marine habitat,
- stopping harmful activities that damage our ecosystems,
- reducing risk from pesticides by 50%, and
- reducing nutrients lost to the environment by 50%.
Talking about their vision, Hannah and Colin noted that now is the time to move from a Forum that is focused on steering policy development and ideological debate - which has been appropriate for the last 10 years - towards a Forum that is actively leading the things needed to achieve 30 by 30, i.e finding the finance for nature ideas appropriate for our nation, and encouraging stronger policy signals to support that. It is time to support high-integrity natural capital markets to emerge in Scotland locally and at landscape scale, whilst encouraging the best standards for assuring quality and transparency nationally and globally. To do that, the Forum needs more sectors and disciplines represented, all professions involved, and local communities and society given agency to understand the importance of nature, and financing it to ensure ongoing healthy life, economies and society.
Looking Forward
The co-Chairs have stressed that now is the time to develop the nature-positive transition (especially the “demand side” of natural capital markets).
They want to increase:
- Local & regional Payments for Ecosystem Services and Nature based Solutions,
- Get institutional investors comfortable dealing with the environmental sector and vice versa, and
- Develop and enable a more joined-up approach to the environmental, social and economic opportunities which emerge from thinking about them holistically.