Valuing Nature Network Call for Proposals to Launch Next Week

The NERC Valuing Nature Network (VNN) will release a call for proposals next week with a deadline of 16th September.

The VNN is an interdisciplinary network of natural, social and economic scientists. The proposals being sought through this initial phase will be for year-long projects, expected to report in the October 2012. It is anticipated that the initial projects will lay the ground for a more substantive phase two, with the results of the initial projects informing the second research call.

The announcements follows a series of discipinary scoping workshops which have taken place in London over the past six weeks, culminating in an interdisciplinary town hall meeting at the end of June. The workshop series brought together researchers to consider the challenges to putting a value on natural capital and the research questions which the network should seek to address. As a result, two major themes have emerged in the work of the VNN:

‘1. Developing a trans-disciplinary framework for the valuation of stocks of natural capital and flows of ecosystem services’.
Natural and social scientists to work together to develop integrated methods for monetary and non-monetary valuation of natural capital and ecosystem services. Teams also to work to identify how natural capital and ecosystem services can be managed sustainably.

‘2. Characterising the socio-ecological system knowledge required to properly capture the value of biodiversity, ecosystem services and natural resources’.
Evaluate the information available in relation to the valuation of natural resource stocks and ecosystem service flows, recognising the limitations and uncertainties in the current knowledge base. Identify ways to improve the accessibility and the integration of this existing data, including socioeconomic data sets. Develop integrated models of natural capital and ecosystem services at relevant spatial and temporal scales.

Further information is available from the VNN website.