Introducing Scotland’s Natural Capital Community Partnerships: Building Fairer, Stronger Connections
5 May 2025
Ross Wilson, Finance Adviser for the Natural Capital Community Partnerships project, shares a blog about this exciting new project.
I’ve recently joined Community Land Scotland as an Adviser in our new Natural Capital Community Partnerships team.
By natural capital we’re referring to things like woodlands, peatlands, rivers and marine ecosystems, but more specifically the way in which they are valued in a market economy. They provide the essential aspects like clean air and water, carbon storage, and biodiversity which ensure that we live on a habitable planet.
More projects are developing to improve our natural capital due to the pressing climate and biodiversity crises. We have all heard about ‘natural capital’ projects that have featured in the news for driving up land prices, ignoring communities and seeking to extract profit to distant shareholders or greenwash ecologically damaging portfolios and industries. However, when managed well, natural capital projects can support both environmental restoration and community development and resilience. They can create local jobs, sustaining livelihoods, and ensuring communities share in the benefits of nature-based investment.
It’s an exciting time to be involved! The market for carbon and biodiversity credits is new and volatile. It’s understandable that as there is experimentation with new concepts, there are examples of projects that go wrong, and concerns that need addressed. I think there’s a huge opportunity for Scotland to lead the way in how to realise the potential of natural capital in a way that generates meaningful wealth and benefits for our communities.
My recent background is in forestry, working at Scottish Forestry as an Assistant Woodland Officer. It was an amazing opportunity to learn about woodland creation and management. My role involved liaising with landowners, forestry agents, community groups, and environmental organisations to provide guidance and support on forestry projects. I also worked at Forestry and Land Scotland as a harvesting supervisor – giving me insight into the day-to-day operations on forestry projects. In this time, I built a huge respect for the passion and skills of those in the industry, and the importance of homegrown timber to the economy. I loved the work but was curious about how forestry would evolve with natural capital markets to deliver wider value beyond timber products.
Before that I had a career working in technology, managing teams building apps and websites. In many ways the pace of change and scope for growth in natural capital projects feels like when I was first involved in making apps soon after Apple launched the iPhone. It was a time when some people didn’t believe that mobile would overtake desktop browsing. The growth seemed inevitable. But how it would look, and what it would mean was far from clear.
The values of the organisations I worked for was always important. In one of my roles, I had the opportunity to work with the sustainability team defining a strategy to make a positive environmental impact by committing a share of our revenue to nature restoration. I found the process of finding suitable projects incredibly challenging. Opportunities where both communities and nature will benefit, and the long-term viability of the project is understood are rare. As I begin to actively take part in and support these new project, I hope this will become the norm and can contribute to community resilience and wealth building.
The chance to apply my experience to natural capital projects was irresistible. I’m passionate about our natural world and want to see our ecosystems improve so . But it’s crucial we find ways to do this that generate wealth and opportunities in rural areas that have experienced sustained lack of investment and local development for centuries.
From my own experiences I know that Scotland is very well placed to take advantage of the growth in this new area. We have many forward-thinking landowners (of all types), engaged organisations and policy teams supporting the industry. We also have highly educated young people who are ambitious and enthusiastic about being involved in the sector. And in industries such as forestry, farming, tourism and renewable development we have world leading expertise. They can all benefit from the growth of this evolving market.
Investment in land for natural capital developments has grown rapidly. But like many growing markets there have been side effects. In many cases it has led to new entrants to the market buying land and beginning natural capital projects without a full understanding of the relationships and communities affected. This has led to increasing land prices, and accusations of community washing. Having local communities meaningfully engaged, and receiving a fair share of the benefits is crucial.
In this project we’ll be building partnerships between local communities, landowners, and nature finance developers. The Natural Capital Community Partnerships initiative aim to create fair and practical examples of projects where everyone works together to share in the potential benefits of natural capital investment.
In practical terms this means collaborating with specific partners to deliver natural capital projects. The goal is creating best practice examples of how this can be done. As an adviser I hope to be able to support our partners in finding the best guidance, organisations, and sources of funding to realise the natural capital opportunities available.
I’m also particularly interested in building understanding of the natural capital finance markets. These are fragmented and opaque and it can be difficult to grasp the financial benefits and consequences on both side of a transaction, let alone being able to transparently compare different products and prices.
There are some incredible examples of communities making the most of natural capital projects already. One of Community Land Scotland’s members, the Assynt Foundation have partnered with the Woodland Trust to create new native woodland schemes. This project is restoring ecosystems to create biodiversity, as well as generating revenue to strengthen the community, allowing them to reinvest in projects and pressing local needs like housing.
Natural capital investment has enormous potential, but how we shape it now will decide whether it truly helps Scotland’s communities or follows the extractive economic models we are all too familiar with. If you’re involved in land management, community ownership, or nature finance and want to share insights, explore opportunities, or simply learn more, I’d love to hear from you. Get in touch, and let’s start a conversation about how we make this work for Scotland’s people and natural environments.
To learn more about the Natural Capital Community Partnerships project, please cantact Ross Wilson.