Advice on appraisal guidance
The NCC commissioned Professor David Maddison (University of Birmingham) and Professor Brett Day (University of East Anglia) to review the UK Government’s economic appraisal guidance so that issues relating to the measurement and valuation of natural capital could be more fully incorporated. The NCC sees this as a vital step to embedding natural capital into economic decision making across Government.
The report highlights a number of areas where possible improvements could be made, including:
- Adopting a clearer framework for assessing how people value changes in natural capital and more coverage of how environmental changes can impact on firms profits;
- Expanding the coverage and improving the treatment of valuation techniques; and
- Options for improving the treatment of spatial, temporal and distributional issues when valuing environmental changes.
The full report and non technical summary can now be downloaded.
The Committee has completed its research project examining the ways in which Government economic appraisal guidance (the Green Book) might take better account of natural capital.