Talk:Natural capital

Discussion
addition is necessary - maybe not complete.

It's a bit more than "land as capital" since air, watersheds, genes, etc., would all classify as natural capital. The "land" definition includes them... soil in particular. But soil is confined to land in a way that air, water, and genes are not.

It's this inadequacy that led to the theory of natural capital itself - land is a glaring exception sitting in the theory of economics. In fact Adam Smith and contemporaries made the point over and over again that everything they said didn't apply to land - that there was nothing good to be said about land ownership if the owner wasn't "improving" it.

Today we might interpret that as improving its soil sustainability, air and water filtration capacity, genetic diversity, etc., rather than simply its human housing and food production capacity. But it's the same principle... just a different valuation ethic.

When refactoring or adding I think we need to address and link to the more traditional militant conservative view of industrial behomeths who view exploitation as pre-eminent use of all god given natural resources .... this practice and view is still pre-eminent or "natural" would not be so scarce and still diminishing.

Another nugget. There is a stock fund firm or venture investment firm based in Seattle that invests in "green" firms because their analysis shows they have small consistent edge of .... 3% .... additional gain over time. I saw this on television .... illustrates Natural Capitalism's point about trends. I will google and see if I can find the firm's name.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/news/business/html98/greenf07_20000911.html

user:mirwin

Natural capital refers to the mineral, plant, and animal formations of the Earth's biosphere when viewed as a means of production of oxygen, water filter, erosion preventer, or provider of other natural services?

I think it is not clear that air and water are part of the natural capital. Shouldn't it be added ?

It is one approach to ecosystem valuation?, an alternative to the traditional view of all non-human life as passive natural resources.

all non-human life, as well as non-living parts of the planetary system - rocks, ocean and atmosphere. An ecosystem is a group of biological communities, which share an environment. Water, air, soil, living life, including human life, interact to form the ecosystem. Not only non-human life.


 * Natural Capital connects to Ecological economics and Deep Ecology, lets develop this article --Swedenborg 05:34, 18 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Can we take away "An editor has expressed a concern that the topic of this article may be unencyclopedic" tag? I see no reason to keep it on this page! --Swedenborg 21:27, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Unencyclopedic
This article reads like an essay. Example:

"However, human knowledge and understanding of the natural environment is never complete, and therefore the boundaries of natural capital expand or contract as knowledge is gained or lost."

This type of wording has no place in an encyclopedia. 67.171.34.5 06:27, 21 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Topic is encyclopedic; execution is not. "Natural capital" is actually an economic term, very closely related to "natural resource". However, I agree that this article needs some heavy editing. I suggest to either merge this with natural resource or put up a  tag, for a start. &mdash;Matveims 23:46, 21 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Leave Topic is encyclopedic! Agree that it needs editing. Invite critics to help to develop instead of promoting deleteationastic approach. --Swedenborg 13:42, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Can we take away unencyclopedic tag?
This article is Encyclopedic but needs cleanup and structure. I put an ecology stub notion in the end maybe that is enough? Or change the top tag to something more appropriate. I will come back later when I have some time and do some work here. --Swedenborg 09:17, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

This article and this terminology are ridiculous
The best thing I can say for this article is that it illustrates the length to which pretenders and wannabe economists will go in order to defile the classical distinction between natural resources and produced commodities. "natural capital" is a contradiction in terms intended to allow Marxists and neoclassical nincompoops to MUNGE the word "capital" to suit their political agendas.The Trucker (talk) 02:59, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

This article and this terminology are indeed ridiculous
I can only agree with Mikcob. The article reads like a weak undergraduate essay, and it would be far better to delete it than try to improve it.

Among many other problems are problems of fact. For example, the term "natural capital" was first used not by Schumacher in 1973 but by Frank Adams in 1914, in his Presidential address before the Royal Society of Canada. He used the metaphor in a context (owned and managed forests) in which it actually made sense. Its present users seem to have no need for such subtlety.

Furthermore any article on natural capital should contain a section on critical views - such as, for example, that nature has not one single attribute of capital. It is not owned, it is free, it is not inert, it cannot be increased or decreased without changing its nature, if left alone it does not depreciate, changes are generally irreversible, it is not fungible, and humans cannot create it. So in what sense is natural capital "capital"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.89.210.34 (talk) 16:21, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

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External links modified (January 2018)
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SEEA EA
In March 2021, at its 52nd session, the United Nations Statistical Commission adopted CHAPTERS 1-7 of the SEEA Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EA) "describing the accounting framework and the physical accounts", as an "international statistical standard". Concerning the parts on valuation of ecosystem services (the Natural Capital aspect of ecosystems) it "recognized that, Chapters 8-11 of the SEEA Ecosystem Accounting describe internationally recognized statistical principles and recommendations" and requested "to promptly resolve the outstanding methodological aspects in chapters 8-11 as identified in the research agenda” as well as "to make clear the different statuses" of the different chapters 1-7", thus acknowledging the great methodological uncertainties of this aspect of the natural capital concept. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.204.91.31 (talk) 10:03, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Natural capital as environmental
Contains 45.127.89.47 (talk) 11:44, 25 January 2023 (UTC)