Value of natural capital: the need for chartered surveyors
Published 19 April 2017
This insight paper develops RICS thinking on the topic of ecosystem services. While it 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. 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.
All chartered surveyors engaged with land and natural resources in any capacity are encouraged to familiarise themselves with this paper.