Scotland’s Natural Capital Asset Index 2025
25 Mar 2025
Nature Scots 2025 Natural Capital Asset Index update shows that the potential of Scotland’s habitats to contribute to people’s wellbeing has grown slightly over the past 20 years and has now plateaued at around its peak in 2017.
The Natural Capital Asset Index focuses on how well nature can contribute to people’s wellbeing through a range of ecosystem services and ecosystem characteristics. Natural capital is made up of the environmental resources that combine to yield a flow of benefits to people, such as materials (e.g. food and water), regulating services (e.g. climate regulation and air pollution removal) and non-tangible cultural benefits (e.g. aesthetics and recreation).
It serves as a crucial tool in the National Performance Framework.
The Natural Capital Asset Index is included as a measure for the National Indicator ‘Increase our natural capital’ in the National Performance Framework. Recently released data for the year 2021 suggests that Scotland’s stock of Natural Capital is being maintained. The capacity of ecosystems to provide benefits fluctuates over time due to changes in habitat quantity and quality. Nature Scot track habitat quantity in the NCAI using what they know about land cover change in Scotland. Habitat quality is tracked using 38 separate indicators which rely on datasets gathered by a range of public organisations and citizen science schemes.
The full Natural Capital Asset Index 2025 used to track the change in Scotland’s natural capital is available online while the full history of the development of the NCAI and the theoretical underpinnings that support it can be found in Nature Scots journal article, published by Ecological Indicators.