Natural Capital Singapore www.naturalcapital.sg
Dan Friess Associate Professor Natural Capital Project and NUS
[email protected]
Nature provides us with numerous ecosystem services (benefits to people) in Singapore
Air purification
Storage of carbon emissions
Water regulation Microclimate cooling
Recreation Coastal protection Fisheries
Nutrient cycling Pollutant trapping
Mental health
Ecosystem services (the benefits that ecosystems provide to people)
Economic and human development progress cannot be sustained if the ecosystems on which they depend are irreparably damaged (Helen Clark, UNDP, Singapore 2012).
It enables management interventions to be multi-functional; to consider not just single stocks, components or services but the full range of inter-related ecosystem components and processes.
Pavan Sukhdev (Director of TEEB) “[It] is not about valuing nature. It’s
about improving our accounting systems to capture those services that are currently not considered.
The stock of natural capital can be considered as a national asset
Manufactured and financial capital
Human and social capital
Natural capital
Natural capital has been assessed globally and in several countries
Global
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
National
UK National Ecosystem Assessment
Nationalsub-national
Portugal, Spain, Netherlands, Germany, Norway, Finland
This project is the first to be conducted at the national scale in the tropics
The Natural Capital Team
Lead Principal Investigators
Adrienne Grêt-Regamey ETH Zurich
Dan Friess Geography, NUS
Project coordinator
Justine Saunders SEC Future Cities Laboratory
Research coordinator
Dan Richards SEC Future Cities Laboratory
Terrestrial work stream
Coastal and marine work stream
Benjamin Lee, Rachel Oh, Alex Yee National Parks Board
Dan Friess, Erik Yando, Sasha Soto Geography, NUS
Dan Richards, Peter Edwards, Leon Gaw SEC Future Cities Laboratory
Natasha Bhatia, Patrick Martin, Chen Mengli Asian School of Environment, NTU
Tan Puay Yok, Winston Chow Architecture and Geography, NUS
Economic work stream
Roman Carrasco Biological Sciences, NUS
Tool work stream
Adrienne Grêt-Regamey ETH Zurich
Gonzalo Carrasco SMART
Assessing Singapore’s Natural Capital
Objective 1: quantify the current status and health of Singapore’s terrestrial and coastalmarine ecosystems Objective 2: quantify the value of Singapore’s terrestrial and coastal/marine ecosystems to Society. Objective 3: assess tradeoffs between urban development (urban assets) and natural capital (natural assets) Objective 4: assess future policy and development opportunities that integrate natural capital within a sustainable future city
Outputs • A series of collaborative workshops with task force of experts throughout the project • Practitioner-focused ebook reporting the current status and future prospects of Singapore’s natural capital • National-scale Information on different Natural Capitals present in Singapore • Maps and data for integration with existing portals e.g. Virtual Singapore, GeoSpace
• Prototype decision-support tool for land managers and agencies
Challenges • We have a huge amount of data in Singapore, but how to access it? • We have a huge amount of data in Singapore, but how to harmonize it? • How to integrate with existing data portals? • How to format and present data in a way that is useful for the end user(s)? • How to ensure that our work stays policy-relevant? • Singapore is very heterogeneous, which provides a challenge for defining and quantifying Natural Capital
Our ultimate aim To incorporate natural capital into the planning process
Natural Capital Singapore www.naturalcapital.sg
Dan Friess Associate Professor
[email protected]