Abstract
This article reconceptualizes natural capital. It categorizes natural capital into renewable natural capital and structural natural capital, and argues for exclusion of nonrenewable natural capital (such as coal and oil) from consideration as a natural capital. It presents 10 guiding principles for sustainable use of natural capital. Both tasks of reconceptualizing natural capital and identifying guiding principles for sustainable use of natural capital are inspired by Aldo Leopold’s land ethic.
Highlights
Seventy years after the publication of A Sand County Almanac (Leopold 1949), Leopold remains a thought leader in the interdisciplinary field of socio-ecological systems (Meine 2020). Lin (2020, p. 1) outlines that the continuing influence of Leopold’s ideas stem from Leopold’s identification of “major foundational issues that remain unresolved: our treatment of the natural world as merely a fund of resources, the relentless exploitation of which may threaten our very own existence.”1 Appreciation for and recognition of short- and long-term ecological processes that sustain humans at individual and collective levels could advance human wellbeing (Xiang 2019; Young 2019)
The ecological economic arguments for management of natural capital largely focus on assigning monetary values to the different services provided by natural capital that contributes to human wellbeing (Costanza and Daly 1992)
nonrenewable or inactive natural capital (NNC) could be viewed as a long-term inventory “that will sit quietly until extracted and used, but once it is used it is gone” (Costanza and Daly 1992, p. 38). It is the depletion and liquidation of the inventory of stock of NNC that contributes to human wellbeing, rather than a flow that can be sustained over time (Costanza and Daly 1992)
Summary
Seventy years after the publication of A Sand County Almanac (Leopold 1949), Leopold remains a thought leader in the interdisciplinary field of socio-ecological systems (Meine 2020). Lin (2020, p. 1) outlines that the continuing influence of Leopold’s ideas stem from Leopold’s identification of “major foundational issues that remain unresolved: our treatment of the natural world as merely a fund of resources, the relentless exploitation of which may threaten our very own existence.” Appreciation for and recognition of short- and long-term ecological processes that sustain humans at individual and collective levels could advance human wellbeing (Xiang 2019; Young 2019). The third aim of this article is to develop a set of guiding principles for sustainable use of natural capital based on the ideas of Leopold, which is presented in Sect. The reenvisioning of natural capital based on the ideas of Leopold demonstrates a constructive and interdependent view of human-nature relationships, which would advance discourse in ecological economics. This is consistent with the arguments of Lin The ecological economic arguments for management of natural capital largely focus on assigning monetary values to the different services provided by natural capital that contributes to human wellbeing (Costanza and Daly 1992). This article presents an alternative approach to monetary valuation-based ecological economic approaches for management of natural capital.
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