Barriers to and opportunities for natural capital accounting: Lessons from Ireland

Like many European countries, Ireland faces numerous threats from climate change and environmental degradation, including biodiversity loss, falling water quality, and property damage due to extreme weather events. Ireland is also one of the EU’s highest emitters of greenhouse gases per capita, and almost a third of its EU-protected species and 85% of its EU-protected habitats are in unfavourable status. Whilst natural resources are under threat, they can also offer solutions to these environmental challenges. Properly managed land can provide large-scale nature-based solutions to challenges including carbon sequestration, flood risk, biodiversity enhancement, and water quality. With agricultural land comprising 68% of Ireland’s land area, the agriculture sector is central to environmental improvements nationally. Natural Capital Accounting (NCA) has been identified as a key tool to measure and track natural resource stocks vital for life, including those resources provided on agricultural land. Major EU policies and legislation, including the European Green Deal, Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 and the Nature Restoration Law promote NCA as a critical tool for EU Member States achieving EU environmental policy commitments. Mandatory NCA reporting at an EU level is also expected imminently. Despite this urgency, uptake of NCA in policy and practice remains poor both in Ireland and elsewhere across the EU. FARM-NC, an Irish Environmental Protection Agency funded project, aims to promote NCA as a critical tool in policy and practice through evidence-based monitoring and evaluation of ecosystem services at farm-level. Drawing on interviews with key agricultural stakeholders in Ireland (n=30), including policymakers, industry representatives, researchers, sustainability practitioners and farmers in 2025-2026, we present preliminary insights on the barriers that currently constrain uptake of NCA in policy and practice and identify recommendations to overcome these barriers. The results show that barriers are centred around three key aspects: (i) digital and technical feasibility challenges related to data capture, data quality, accuracy and trust, training and expertise; (ii) the internal design of NCA, including how complexity, simplification, and comparability are handled within the accounting framework itself, which makes it difficult for policymakers and practitioners to define the parameters to base natural capital accounts on, and; (iii) weak regulations, incentives and political leadership to demonstrate benefits of NCA to diverse stakeholders. We identify several recommendations to overcome these barriers in policy and practice, which have relevance beyond Ireland, particularly given the aforementioned EU policy and legislative direction aiming to mandate NCA reporting to improve environmental outcomes. Our findings and recommendations could greatly support these efforts.