Sustainable cities / / Sustainable cities / Life on Earth Life on Earth Jackie Fookes believes that including natural capital in project decision making is vital to preserving and restoring our precious environment and ecosystems. Our natural capital is vital for sustaining life on earth. Its stock of forests, water, land, minerals and oceans provide valuable flows of goods and services that are important for managing floods and water quality, maintaining soil fertility and providing food, and for reducing air pollution and adapting to climate change. People also like to explore nature, and access to the natural environment is crucial for our health and wellbeing. Yet, effective consideration of natural capital is mostly absent from important economic decision making. Gross domestic product or GDP is a measure of economic health, but natural capital rarely gets a mention. The health of our plants, animals, air, water, soils, minerals etc are either hidden or excluded – and are in decline in too many places. Accounting for change Growing area of expertise Accounting for change Our projects can help reverse the decline by ensuring that what we, as engineers deliver, improves natural capital assets by leaving the environment in a measurably better state than we found it. But, we can only know that our work has had a positive impact – for example, by enhancing protected natural habitats or by improving flood protection through natural water catchment management – where we have a good picture of what already exists, and its value. That’s where natural capital accounting (NCA) comes in. It provides a baseline for the stocks of natural capital and flows of services supplied by them, and measures changes over time from land use changes. + read more Growing area of expertise NCA is a growing area of environmental management and Mott MacDonald is a market leader, both in the UK and internationally. Our projects in the UK include: looking at integrating NCA into a sustainable catchment management strategy that includes all six capitals of sustainability – financial, manufactured, intellectual, human, social and relationship, and natural; and the natural capital and ecosystems services benefits and disbenefits of investments by regional groups of water providers in new assets, from reservoirs and desalination to natural flood management and natural water purification. In the Middle East, we are developing an interactive natural capital and ecosystem services smart map for an entire country that can be used by developers, academics and government agencies to determine the best areas for investment and development. The map includes climate change scenarios. In addition, we are assisting on renewable energy projects to ensure that natural capital is not lost during development. + read more Jackie Fookes is natural capital and ecosystems lead at Mott MacDonald This is the future We want to know if you share our vision – and what is yours? Take a look. Get in touch. About us Sustainability Vision and values Equality, diversity and inclusion Contact Our policies Legal Cookies Privacy Registered companies Safeguarding Slavery and human trafficking Follow us Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Instagram YouTube © 2021 Mott MacDonald Our use of cookies We use necessary cookies to make our site work. We'd also like to set optional analytics cookies to help us improve it. We won't set optional cookies unless you enable them. Using this tool will set a cookie on your device to remember your preferences. Accept recommended cookies Manage cookies