The world as a garden: a philosophical analysis of natural capital in economics

Abstract

This dissertation undertakes a philosophical analysis of and argues that this concept has prompted economists to view nature in a radically novel manner. Formerly, economists referred to nature and natural products as a collection of inert materials to be drawn upon in isolation and then rearranged by human agents to produce commodities. More recently, however, nature is depicted as a collection of active, modifiable, and economically valuable processes, often construed as ecosystems that produce marketable and services gratis. Nature consists of various unproduced mechanisms or machines that are first discovered and then channeled so as to serve human ends. In short, nature as an ideal is a kind of garden that is characterized by natural objects purposefully arranged by intentional human agents.The first two chapters of this dissertation lays out working definitions of the key terms, such as capital and nature, and then argues that the spatio-temporal particulars denoted by the concept of natural capital, such as ecosystems, are objects (2) capable of producing, (3) depletable, (4) beneficial, (5) original, and (6) self-generative. Among these six characteristics, it is argued that the first four are shared with manufactured capital, while the last two-original and self-generative- drive a wedge between natural and manufactured capital.Chapter three traces the historical roots of nature as a producer in the works of the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus' (1749) Oeconomia naturae and the physiocrats of France during the mid-18th century. This chapter argues that if natural capital is taken to denote nature as an unassisted producer of readily consumable and services, then it can hardly be considered a novel concept. There is a nascent category of the concept of natural capital to be unearthed in the writings of classical political economists, such as Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, and Karl Marx. When such economic theorists referred to the spontaneous productions of the Earth and nature's products, they had a distinctive class of production in mind, one that denotes nature's independently generated products.Chapter four, entitled, Critical Natural Capital and Sustainable Development, tackles a version of the most vexing question concerning natural capital: to what extent can manufactured capital serve as a substitute for natural capital? Economists influenced by the life sciences have long argued that there is a subset of natural capital, natural capital, for which there are no substitutes. This special category of natural capital is meant to denote the ecological conditions essential to the continued existence of economic agents and therefore, sustainable development. However, the problem is that no one has explained what these conditions might be and why they are essential for this purpose. To resolve this issue, this chapter introduces a new theory of what are termed basic ecological goods (BEGs). It is shown that BEGs are distinct from ordinary in consumer choice theory since the former are objective ecological conditions that must be met for the continued existence of economic agents. BEGs are required for the continued existence of a given agent because they possess objective causal properties essential for this purpose. The upshot of this theory is that the ecological conditions required for human economic activity and, therefore, sustainable development, are no longer shrouded in mystery as they were under the canopy of critical natural capital. …