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Natural Capital Project Newsletter, August 2021 
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Designing sustainable cities


By 2050, more than 70 percent of the world’s population will live in cities. Natural Capital Project researchers have developed software that shows city planners where to invest in nature to improve people’s lives and save billions of dollars. Watch the short explainer video.

Sea-level rise solutions


Communities trying to fight sea-level rise could inadvertently make flooding worse for their neighbors, according to a new study from the Natural Capital Project. Watch a short explainer.

Amplifying impact through NatCap's network

 

NatCap's Mary Ruckelshaus reviews some recent highlights in uptake of natural capital approaches and tools.

Interview with a NatCapper: Adrian Vogl


Adrian Vogl discusses her new role with the World Bank, where she is building a team of ecosystem service specialists to make science-based investments in nature more accessible.

Bringing the Value of Nature into the Economic Mainstream
September 7, 10 AM Pacific Time

Nature provides numerous benefits to people and essential life support, but the values of nature are often largely invisible in market economies (“nature works for free”). An ongoing partnership between the Natural Capital Project and the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP), a global network of researchers and policymakers conducting quantitative analysis of international trade and environmental policies, is working to change this.

Join a panel of academic experts as they discuss the integration of economic and ecosystem services models to better quantify nature's contributions at September's Natural Capital Conversation. Learn more about the speakers and session here.
We’re excited to see InVEST being used in the Inter-American Development Bank’s new Integrated Economic-Environmental Modeling (IEEM) Platform, a decision support tool for public policy and investment design. IEEM integrates natural capital accounts and is used to assess economic, social, and environmental impacts of policies. Linking IEEM with Ecosystem Services Modeling (InVEST models, to be specific) enables estimation of policy impacts on future ecosystem service flows and on indicators that go beyond Gross Domestic Product such as wealth. To date, IEEM models have been developed for 25 countries.

Resources, including Datapackets and a training program, will be accessible in October 2021 via the OPEN IEEM PLATFORM portal.

In the meantime, interested readers can learn more about the IEEM approach in these publications: An Amazon Tipping Point, The Value of Biodiversity in Economic Decision Making and Decarbonization of Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Uses.

Press & Publications Highlights


The professor who assigns value to nature—then persuades world leaders to save it
By Tik Root | The Washington Post | July 30, 2021

Sustainable cities
In Top of Mind with Julie Rose | BYU Radio | July 21, 2021

Building infrastructure to stop sea level rise can have an unfortunate consequence
By Adele Peters | Fast Company | July 16, 2021

Be very careful about where you build that seawall
By Matt Simon | WIRED | July 14, 2021 | Also in Grist, Mother Jones, and Slate Magazine
 
Press

 

Meet the 2021 Pritzker Award Candidates #1-5. By Ashley Kruythoff, UCLA Institute of the Environment & Sustainability. August 3, 2021. 

Nature Can Boost Health of People in Cities. By Futurity, The Good Men Project. August 2, 2021.

Free software from U of M, Urban InVest, promotes natural sustainability worldwide. By DeAnna Giles, FOX 9. July 30, 2021. 

Natural Capital Project Releases Open Source Data and Modeling Platform. By Smart Cities Connect Staff. July 29, 2021.  

Managing sea-level rise. By Adrienne Wartts, SMAST News. July 27, 2021. 

Study: Walls for sea level rise could cause floods in San Mateo County. By Julia Lee, San Mateo Daily Journal. July 26, 2021. 

Announcing candidates for the 2021 Pritzker Emerging Environmental Genius Award. By David Colgan, UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. July 22, 2021.

It turns out seawalls might not be the most thought-out way to address sea level rise. By Josh Niland, Archinect. July 20, 2021.

Sea walls might just make floods someone else’s problem, study suggests. By Doug Johnson, Ars Technica. July 15, 2021. 

Embankments, seawalls may increase inundation, costs: New study. DownToEarth. July 15, 2021. 

Researchers map how sea-level rise adaptation strategies impact economies and floodwaters. Mirage News. July 13, 2021. 

Researchers Map How Strategies to Combat Sea-Level Rise can Impact Neighboring Communities. AZo Cleantech. July 13, 2021.

Economic impacts of flooding. By Herb Booth, The University of Texas at Arlington-News Center. July 12, 2021. 

Stanford researchers map how sea-level rise adaptation strategies impact economies and floodwaters. By Sarah Cafasso, Stanford News. July 12, 2021. Also in ScienMag, ScienceDaily, Phys.org.

New software shows how to maximize the benefits of investing in urban nature. University of Minnesota. July 6, 2021. 

Better planning can reduce the urban heat island effect. By Anne-Muriel Brouet, Phys Org. July 2, 2021. 

Dime qué haces y te diré quien eres: Los nombres de las aves. By La Torna - Perifoneo Cultural, Medium. June 28, 2021.  

A new sustainable city planning program. By Ellen Wilkinson, Retail Crowd. June 25, 2021.

New tools quantify costs, benefits of urban greenspace investments. GCN. June 24, 2021. 

Urban InVEST Can Help Design Sustainable Cities for Free: All the Details. Gadgets 360. June 24, 2021.

Dalla complessità dei modelli matematici le dighe “smart” che rispettano l’ambiente. By Silvia Bandelloni, Lastampa. June 23, 2021.

Premio Aspen alla ricerca Italia-Usa per dighe più sostenibili. ANSA. June 23, 2021. 

Stanford software shows cities the benefits of sustainable investments for free. Trending Topics. June 23, 2021. 

New software helps design sustainable cities. Stockholm Resilience Centre. June 22, 2021. 

Green Spaces = Better Health? TalkZone. June 22, 2021. 

Platform calculates green infrastructure ROI. By Sarah Wray, Cities Today. June 22, 2021.

Stanford researchers develop new software for designing sustainable cities. By Sarah Cafasso, Stanford News. June 21, 2021. Also in Mirage News, Leiden University, YubaNet, SciTechDaily, Stormwater Online.

New urban planning software may inspire more sustainable cities. By Brooks Hays, UPI. June 21, 2021.

The world’s most awesome outdoor installations. By Rebecca Newman, Financial Times. June 15, 2021. 

Nature Can Boost Health of People in Cities. By Sarah Cafasso, The Epoch Times. June 13, 2021.
 

Publications

Brand, M. W., Quesnel, K. J., Saksa, P., Ulibarri, N., Bomblies, A., Mandle, L., Allaire, M., Wing, O., Puente, J. T. la, Parker, E., Nay, J., Sanders, B. F., Rosowsky, D., Lee, J., Johnson, K., Gudino-Elizondo, N., Ajami, N. K., Wobbrock, N., Adriaens, P., … Gibbons, J. P. (2021). Environmental Impact Bonds: A common framework and looking ahead. Environmental Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1088/2634-4505/ac0b2c

Hamann, M., Johnson, J. A., Chaigneau, T., Chaplin-Kramer, R., Mandle, L., & Rieb, J. T. (2021). Ecosystem service modelling. In The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods for Social-Ecological Systems. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003021339-37

Hamel, P., Guerry, A. D., Polasky, S., Han, B., Douglass, J. A., Hamann, M., Janke, B., Kuiper, J. J., Levrel, H., Liu, H., Lonsdorf, E., McDonald, R. I., Nootenboom, C., Ouyang, Z., Remme, R. P., Sharp, R. P., Tardieu, L., Viguié, V., Xu, D., … Daily, G. C. (2021). Mapping the benefits of nature in cities with the InVEST software. Npj Urban Sustainability, 1(1), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42949-021-00027-9

Hamel, P., Hamann, M., Kuiper, J. J., Andersson, E., Arkema, K. K., Silver, J. M., Daily, G. C., & Guerry, A. D. (2021). Blending Ecosystem Service and Resilience Perspectives in Planning of Natural Infrastructure: Lessons from the San Francisco Bay Area. Frontiers in Environmental Science, 9. https://doi.org/10.3389/fenvs.2021.601136

Tallis, H., Fargione, J., Game, E., McDonald, R., Baumgarten, L., Bhagabati, N., Cortez, R., Griscom, B., Higgins, J., Kennedy, C. M., Kiesecker, J., Kroeger, T., Leberer, T., McGowan, J., Mandle, L., Masuda, Y. J., Morrison, S. A., Palmer, S., Shirer, R., … Possingham, H. P. (2021). Prioritizing actions: Spatial action maps for conservation. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, n/a(n/a). https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.14651

Webber, J. L., Balbi, M., Lallemant, D., Gibson, M. J., Fu, G., Butler, D., & Hamel, P. (2021). Towards Regional Scale Stormwater Flood Management Strategies through Rapid Preliminary Intervention Screening. Water, 13(15), 2027. https://doi.org/10.3390/w13152027

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The Natural Capital Project pioneers science, technology, and partnerships that enable people and nature to thrive.


From our home at Stanford University, the Natural Capital Project operates as a partnership between the University of Minnesota Institute on the Environment, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Stockholm Resilience Centre, The Nature Conservancy, and World Wildlife Fund. More on our partners

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