Natural Capital Project
The Natural Capital Alliance (formerly the Natural Capital Project) aims to improve the well-being of all by motivating greater investment in natural capital – Earth’s lands, waters, and biodiversity, which sustain human life and prosperity. With our global hub at Stanford University, NatCap is a partnership between interdisciplinary researchers, professionals, and leaders around the world. Its core collaborators are the Stockholm Resilience Centre, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the University of Minnesota’s NatCap TEEMs, WWF, The Nature Conservancy, and Natural Capital Insights. It also has a network of hundreds of other collaborators around the world. Their work helps people, governments, and corporations incorporate the value of nature into decision-making.
Starting with listening, we work with decision-makers to co-develop natural capital approaches to the development challenges they face. We use iterative engagement that begins with stakeholders and their needs, so the new science and tools we create together are immediately relevant and can be incorporated into existing decision processes. We work in a wide array of places and sectors, in decision contexts as varied as: building resilience to climate and coastal hazards; providing evidence to inform innovative financing for nature and people including water funds, payments for ecosystem services, blue/green bonds, and more; creating natural capital accounts and Gross Ecosystem Product accounts; guiding development planning; managing corporate risk; informing impact assessment and permitting; making smart transportation and infrastructure loan decisions; and targeting investments in ecosystem restoration to maximize benefits to people.
NatCap’s open-source InVEST software (now downloaded in >185 countries), is integral to its approach to transforming decisions. So too is its work to build capacity through learning exchanges and trainingtrainings and engaging leaders to accelerate the uptake and magnify the impact of successes, including through the Stanford-hosted Natural Capital Symposium.
In addition to developing the evidence for the power of natural capital approaches to transform decisions, NatCap creates software (now downloaded in 160 countries), builds capacity through learning exchanges and training, and engages leaders to accelerate the uptake and magnify the impact of successes to date.
More information: Natural Capital Alliance
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