1. What is the NCEA ‘Find Natural Capital Data’ search service?

Created: 05 June 2025 Updated:

The NCEA ‘Find Natural Capital Data’ search service allows you to search and access data and information relevant to taking a natural capital approach. It has been developed as part of Defra’s Natural Capital and Ecosystem Assessment (NCEA) programme which you can read more about in this slide pack and on the NCEA About page.

Natural capital approach and data

Natural capital includes certain stocks of the elements of nature that have value to society, such as forests, fisheries, rivers, biodiversity, land and minerals. Natural capital includes both the living and non-living aspects of ecosystems. Taking a natural capital approach is about considering the value of the natural environment for people and the economy. Relevant datasets may include information on the condition, location or extent of natural capital assets (such as habitats and species), the ecosystem services they deliver, the pressures that act on them and/or their value.

NCEA and natural capital approach

The NCEA is Defra’s largest R&D programme, responding to recommendations by the Natural Capital Committee for an environmental baseline census of natural capital stocks and the Dasgupta Review on the Economics of Biodiversity to change the way we think about and value nature. The NCEA will transform environmental decision making in England through generating a ‘whole system’ picture of the state of our natural environment. It will achieve this through delivering a nationwide survey of England’s land, freshwater and coast; and improving access to our environmental data through the ‘Find Natural Capital Data search’ service.

Why do we need a natural capital search service?

The Dasgupta Review and the Natural Capital Committee Final Report point out that our economies are embedded within nature but that we are missing the data to make robust assessments of our environmental condition. Environmental data is stored in multiple places in multiple formats, with no single joined up access point or even visibility of what is available. To generate a ‘whole system’ picture of the state of England’s natural environment, we need to be able to access all data relevant to taking a natural capital approach. The NCEA ‘Find Natural Capital Data’ search service will tackle this by making all NCEA outputs and relevant natural capital data collected beyond NCEA accessible in a single digital location. Data will be made findable using natural capital terms, accessible under an Open Government Licence wherever possible and adhere to the Q-FAIR principles.