Natural Capital

At Payne Hicks Beach, we understand the importance of natural capital to the environment and to business alongside the challenges, opportunities and potential social and environmental advantages that it offers the economy.

Natural capital can be defined as the world’s stocks of natural assets.  These include land, forests, air, soil and all living things.  These natural assets provide humans with a range of “ecosystem services”, such as the food that we eat and the water that we drink.  They also offer less visible advantages such as carbon sequestration and natural flood defences.

These assets have always existed in one form or another, but it is only relatively recently that this label has been applied to them reflecting an increasing global demand both for their protection and for their trade within the context of sustainable business and climate enhanced corporate social responsibility.

Alongside the advice we provide to landowners on renewable energy projects, we work with landowners, renewable energy providers and developers who are looking to create or gain access to biodiversity net gain units, as well as those looking to market the climate benefit of the restoration of peatland or the planting of new woodland through the creation and sale of carbon credits.