12 February, 2025
An Official Statistics Publication for Scotland: Natural Capital Asset Index (NCAI) up to 2022
NatureScot has today released the latest figures tracking the Natural Capital Asset Index (NCAI) up to 2022. The NCAI looks at how well nature is able to contribute to people’s wellbeing through a range of ecosystem services and characteristics. Natural capital underpins many Scottish policy areas across 11 broad categories, ranging from farming to economics to community safety.
The NCAI is designed to work alongside and complement other tools that measure the state of biodiversity, including reporting on species, habitats and genetic diversity within wild species.
The main findings show that overall, the NCAI has remained stable for 2022 over the short term. Over the long term, the NCAI is 2.8 percentage points above the year 2000 baseline.
The NCAI is broken down by ecosystem services and broad habitat types to better understand the factors contributing to its trends.
Agriculture and cultivated habitat was the only type to have increased its contribution to people’s wellbeing in the short term (+4.6 percentage points between 2019 and 2022). The remaining habitats were stable over this period. This improvement in the agriculture and cultivated habitat was mainly driven by a decrease in the use of fertilisers which is inputted in the NCAI as an inverse (+16.9 percentage points between 2019 and 2022) and has a positive effect on the Natural Capital Asset Index overall, although this measure doesn’t take into account the amount of active ingredient in the fertilisers.
All ecosystem services groups have remained stable between 2019 and 2022. The ecosystem services groups are:
- Provisioning services, which refer to material outputs, such as food or water for drinking
- Regulation and maintenance services, which are ecological processes such as climate regulation and air pollution removal
- Cultural services, which include non-tangible contributions to wellbeing, such as aesthetics and recreation.
Contact information
- Name
- NatureScot Media
- Telephone
- 0131 316 2655
- media@nature.scot
Notes to editors
The Natural Capital Asset Index (NCAI or the Index) helps us assess Scotland’s prosperity: it tracks the capacity of Scotland’s terrestrial ecosystems to provide the benefits that underpin our quality of life and that of future generations. The NCAI is a composite index made of a range of datasets looking at the amount and characteristics of different Scottish habitats. It is not a monetary value but is composed in a way which reflects the relative contribution of habitats to the wellbeing, or quality of life, of those who live in Scotland. The capacity of ecosystems to provide benefits fluctuates over time due to changes in habitat quantity and quality.
This publication has been produced in line with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics.
NatureScot is Scotland's nature agency. We work to enhance our natural environment in Scotland and inspire everyone to care more about it. Our priority is a nature-rich future for Scotland and an effective response to the climate emergency. For more information, visit our website at www.nature.scot or follow us on X at https://x.com/NatureScot
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