Dr Hannah Rudman works on how the natural economy sector and its natural capital1 are solutions for the grand challenges we face: climate emergency, biodiversity collapse, pollution, and food safety and security.
Hannah’s work in enterprise and action research explores:
- What business, investment and relationship models do projects need?
- How can nature tech and data innovations be transparent and trustable enough to help?
- Nature is valuable – how can public policy, philanthropy and private investment embed that vital truth in our societies, economies and ideologies?
- Natural capital is the goods and services provided by Earth’s terrestrial and marine ecosystems. The term is an economic metaphor for the now limited stocks of physical and biological natural resources found on the Earth. The ‘capital’ refers to any stock that can yield a flow of goods in the future, even after being degraded and extracted by human activity and business. ↩︎
Developing Business Models
Hannah currently works with Highlands Rewilding as an Executive Director, focussed on the company’s development and resilience, utilising a bundle of natural capital focussed business and philanthropic models.
HRL is about scaling nature restoration as critical ecosystem services – not just to combat climate emergency and biodiversity crisis – also to prove that investing in nature as a service business can create environmental, social and financial returns – a liveable Earth supporting all our common wealth and health.
Co-Chairing the
Scottish Forum on Natural Capital
Hannah is Co-Chair of the national forum, collaborating with Colin Brown and the Leadership Group to energise and facilitate action through the Hubs. Hannah co-led the Scottish Finance Pioneers Hub since 2020, growing it from 80 members from 30 organisations, to over 800 members representing c. 230 organisations.
Networks across Scotland and beyond, the Hubs share natural capital knowledge, learning, insights, know-how, opportunities and intelligence through discussion and events. Please join in with the Hubs:
Latest Posts on the Scottish Forum on Natural Capital
Co-director of SRUC’s
Thriving Natural Capital Centre
Hannah secured grants of £1.9m, a 45% success rate over 2.5 years.
Principal Investigator on 12 projects, Hannah’s action research impacted payments for ecosystem services through developing Landscape Enterprise Networks in Scotland (LENS), and contributed to work for the Scottish Government developing biodiversity policy. She made a popular online course for everyone called SRUC Bytes, a series of 20-minute videos giving insight into how new tech works, how it’s actually being deployed in the natural economy sector and the real benefits it achieves.
Alliance for Scotland’s Rainforest
In October 2022, RSPB Scotland was awarded an IRNS grant for “Glencripesdale temperate rainforest restoration project: Biodiversity Net Gain Projects and Credits Applicable Across Scotland’s Rainforest”. Hannah was a subcontracted partner, and the Alliance for Scotland’s Rainforest’s (ASR) Natural Capital Investment and Research groups, which Hannah is co-opted onto, were project overseers.
The RSPB Scotland team was a blend of fundraising professionals and onsite wardens and managers at Glencripesdale Rainforest Reserve, which had come into RSPB ownership in the early autumn of 2022.
We created a baseline biodiversity measurement at the site produced from decision-grade data collected by nature tech (camera traps, audio recorders, eDNA), and blended that with ecologists reports, which was completed in 2023. This report summarises the methods and outputs achieved. The impact of this data is not yet able to be tested in formal credit sale or philanthropic programmes, but it has been socialised to positive response from private, public and philanthropic funders through live in-person and video presentations.
The experiences and learnings of the fieldwork team cross-fertilised into initial Scottish Government Scottish Natural Capital Markets Framework policy development work. See this report considering methodologies for measuring biodiversity at site-level for use in Scotland.