Value of natural capital: the need for chartered surveyors

This insight paper develops RICS thinking on the topic of ecosystem services. While this paper outlines examples that involve grasslands and woodlands, the approaches involved can be applied across a range of natural assets.

The language and approaches of environmental valuation are presented to enable parallels to be drawn with the professional and technical procedures that are familiar to professional valuers when dealing with the valuation of conventional property assets in established (actual or notional) market contexts. Naturally, care is required to ensure that clients fully understand the nature of the advice being provided, and that there may — and usually will — be wide divergence between figures provided on these fundamentally different bases.

We encourage all chartered surveyors engaged with land and natural resources in any capacity to familiarise themselves with this paper and other relevant industry publications and stay abreast of developments in the ecosystems services arena as they emerge and evolve.