World's economies need natural capital

Capital in the forms of cash and credit might be hard to come by in these economically constrained times, but natural capital could soon prove rarer still if we don’t start accounting for nature’s valuable services to society.

That’s the message underpinning GLOBE International’s “Natural Capital Action Plan,” a guide to help governments “reconcile economic and environmental interests.” The global legislators’ organisation’s plan was issued during the Convention on Biodiversity summit taking place in Nagoya, Japan.

“Natural capital refers to those aspects of the natural environment that deliver socio-economic value through ecosystem services,” states the GLOBE report. “Currently, natural capital is not comprehensively recorded and therefore not fully recognised in policy-making processes. By not including the value of ecosystem services in the cost benefit analysis of policy options, decision makers are often choosing solutions that are detrimental to a country’s stock of natural capital.”

Accounting for and protecting natural capital is considered more critical than ever, as many scientists and conservationists believe we are now in the midst of the planet’s sixth great extinction event.

The GLOBE plan recommends that governments:

• Create a minister-level position with responsibility for managing a country’s natural wealth;
• Develop a comprehensive set of natural capital accounts and a report showing which policy choices were affected by integrating the true value of ecosystem services;
• Establish a ministerial committee to ensure all government departments account for natural capital in their policies and programmes;
• Encourage national audit offices to consider natural capital when assessing the effectiveness and efficiency of government resource use;
• Emphasise that “investing in natural capital” can benefit both the economy and society, and that restoring and conserving the environment can help achieve mainstream public policy goals.

In a separate report released the same day, GLOBE also highlighted several natural capital-focused success stories from around the world, including Australia’s Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, which was recently rezoned to prohibit all resource extraction, including fishing, across one-third of the preserve; Brazilian state tax revenue redistribution to municipalities based on environmental indicators; and China’s Sloping Land Conversion Programme, which has so far enrolled around 23 million hectares of land for afforestation.