A New Look at the Natural Capital Concept: Approaches, Structure, and Evaluation Procedure

Margarita Ignatyeva,Vera Yurak,Oksana Logvinenko

doi:10.3390/su12219236

Margarita Ignatyeva, Vera Yurak + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/su12219236

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Abstract

This article considers the concept of natural capital as a basic construct of sustainable development. However, after numerous studies, a number of aspects of accounting and valuation of natural capital remain unspecified. The relevance and imperfection of the guidelines used to assess natural capital make relevant the development of such issues as the conceptual apparatus and methods to natural capital assessment. Therefore, the core objectives of the paper are: (1) to substantiate the structure of natural capital, taking into account the natural resources and ecosystem approaches; (2) to clarify the concepts of “function” and “services” in relation to abiotic and biotic components of the environment; (3) to generalize and analyze the classifications of ecosystem services, and to develop the authors’ classification; (4) to identify the most common methods for the economic assessment of natural capital’s components, and to implement these methods within a specific territory. These methods have been tested on the Khanty–Mansi Autonomous Okrug (KhMAD, Russia). The most typical ecosystems of the region and their inherent ecosystem services have been identified. Assessment results are presented for (1) forest ecosystems, (2) mountain ecosystems, and (3) ecosystems of swamps, lakes, and rivers.

Highlights

The socioeconomic development of a territory is largely determined by the presence and degree of usage of the economic potential, which includes lower-order potentials: production, labor, innovation, natural, etc
The development of a consistent natural capital approach was made by (1) identifying three approaches to substantiating the structural components of natural capital, represented by abiotic and biotic components of ecosystems and their participation in the formation of the flow of “goods” and ecosystem services; (2) developing the authors’ classification, including a list of supporting, provisioning, regulating, and social ecosystem services, taking into account the generalization of the existing studies on the topic; and (3) the establishment of the most common methods used for the economic assessment of natural resources and ecosystem services and testing them on a specific area
The paper develops the consistent approach of natural capital by (1) identifying three approaches to substantiating the structural components of natural capital, represented by abiotic and biotic components of ecosystems and their participation in the formation of the flow of goods and ecosystem services; (2) developing the authors’ classification, including a list of supporting, provisioning, regulating, and social ecosystem services, taking into account the generalization of the existing studies on the topic; and (3) the establishment of the most common methods used for the economic assessment of natural resources and ecosystem services and testing them on a specific area

Summary

Introduction

The socioeconomic development of a territory is largely determined by the presence and degree of usage of the economic potential, which includes lower-order potentials: production, labor, innovation, natural, etc. Even though accounting in physical units does not cause problems, assessment in value units remains unresolved [6], the experience of assessing the natural resource potential of individual territories—and, in recent years, regional natural capital—takes place both in foreign and Russian practice [15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26]. Studies and practices exist for measuring and analyzing the natural capital in accountancy systems [27]. Economic valuation issues are complicated by the existence of multiple approaches to natural capital [30,31]. After numerous studies on the theoretical and methodological foundations of ecological economics [32,33,34,35], a number of aspects of accounting and valuation of natural capital remain unspecified [36,37,38]. The novelty of the problem (the appearance of which occurred in the middle of the twentieth century) and the relevance and imperfection of the guidelines used to assess natural capital make relevant the development of such issues as the conceptual apparatus and methods for natural capital’s assessment

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