Do you work for an environmental NGO or institution and want to assess the value of nature to generate social and political change?
Do you think an ecosystem services assessment or natural capital account might help achieve your conservation and sustainable development goals? If so, a new guide produced by the Luc Hoffmann Institute, WWF and partners is for you. It outlines important considerations to help develop effective strategies for ‘valuing nature’ initiatives and projects.
Valuing nature initiatives aim to demonstrate, capture and increase the value of nature to people. Increasingly used by conservation NGOs and other organisations they include assessments that:
- Identify natural capital and ecosystem services important to stakeholders, through collective or participatory processes
- Measure, map and value nature’s benefits to people in qualitative, quantitative and monetary terms
- Identify trade-offs and synergies among different values
- Translate these values into conservation incentives, development plans, policies, investments and decisions by the public and private sector
Creating successful valuing nature initiatives: A guide to analysing local context and developing strong theories of change aims to help practitioners understand local context and external pressures – the institutional, political, legal, economic and social setting of conservation – to guide action for better ecosystem management. It outlines six steps that should be followed to ensure maximum impact.
Download the guide here.