Spatial mapping of natural capital investments and beneficiaries.
Development of a method, assumptions and template for spatially mapping natural capital investments and beneficiaries that is readily replicable in catchments across England.
Please note: Applications for EA placements will be closed by CoP Tuesday 22nd August, please apply to Rachel.lenane@environment-agency.gov.uk before then.
Catchments are busy places – a considerable amount of funding goes into them, from land use subsidies, flood risk investment, water company investment, fisheries improvement funds, local authority and Local Enterprise Partnership funds etc. However we are not always clear who the beneficiaries may be – in and out of the catchment, locally or nationally. We could support improved decision making and mobilise more money by being able to spatially map investments and beneficiaries. This could be compared with where investment is needed (a separate process) and who may have an interest in contributing. This would provide a visual and compelling evidence base to be able to assess how efficient current funding approaches are (e.g. ring fenced, aligned priorities etc) to influence policy, and also to directly influence investments now in catchments from a wider range of beneficiaries than is currently the case.
This is an opportunity to learn how a public sector organisation applies natural capital and ecosystem services concepts in practice, as there we will test the application of this mapping in catchments where we have current natural capital trials, to take this work from research to application relatively quickly.