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The role and value of natural capital and development of indicators for use in disaster preparedness in the UK's Overseas Territory of the British Virgin Islands 2020

Abstract

The British Virgin Islands (BVI), like many of the UK Caribbean Overseas Territories, are highly dependent on the natural environment for its economic and social well-being. Tourism is a dominant economic sector with visitors on cruise ships and charter yachts drawn to the Islands by its landscape, beaches, coral reefs and rich biodiversity. The unprecedented events of 2017 demonstrated the islands' vulnerability to the natural hazards, the associated impacts to the population, damage to built infrastructure, natural capital assets and the resulting serious implications to the economy.

Wood Environment and Infrastructure Solutions UK Ltd was commissioned by JNCC to:

  • Assess the role and economic value of the BVI’s natural capital in the protection of vulnerable man-made capital from natural hazards. Specifically, to map the value of natural capital assets nationally (Objective 1).
  • Further develop a framework of environmental indictors with a set of indicators required for new environmental legislation which monitor long-term environmental change, a set of short-term disaster response indicators for monitoring the post-hurricane responses of and to the natural environment and a set of environmental economic indicators (Objective 2).
  • Support the Government of BVI with the integration of indicators into the Environment Bill, Disaster and Needs Assessment (DANA) and for further national and international reporting (Objective 3).

The purpose of this report is to provide a summary of the outcomes of these three areas of work.

This study was undertaken as part of a programme of Natural Capital Assessment (NCA) in the UK's Caribbean Overseas Territories implemented by JNCC, and was conducted by Wood Environment & Infrastructure Solutions UK Limited. Funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) of the UK Government through the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF), the work sits under the Environmental Resilience programme which includes objectives to integrate natural capital considerations into economic and social development planning.

Resource type Publication

Topic category Environment

Reference date 2020·04·01

Citation
Wood Environment & Infrastructure Solutions UK Limited. 2020. The role and value of natural capital and development of indicators for use in disaster preparedness in the UK's Overseas Territory of the British Virgin Islands. Natural Capital in the UK’s Overseas Territories Report Series – Supplementary Report (Caribbean Region). Contracted report to JNCC.

Lineage
Contracted report to JNCC as part of the 'Natural Capital in the Caribbean and South Atlantic Overseas Territories: Valuation, Vulnerability and Monitoring Change' project.

Responsible organisation
Communications, JNCC resourceProvider

Limitations on public access No limitations

Use constraints The contents of this report are subject to copyright owned by JNCC, apart from the datasets that have been used to generate results, which are under licence.

Metadata date 2020·10·05

Metadata point of contact
Communications, JNCC

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