3.2.1-.7 Natural Capital

Natural Capitalincludes the core and crust of the

earth, the biosphere itself -

teeming with forests,

grasslands, wetlands, tundra,

kelp forests, deserts, and other ecosystems - and

the upper layers of the atmosphere.

• The stock is the present accumulated quantity of natural capital. It is a supply accumulated for future use; a store.

• The natural income is any sustainable yield or rate of harvest from the stocks.

• Natural capital is the term used for ‘natural resources’ which can be exploited to produce natural income of goods and services.

• e.g. trees as timber that can be harvested and sold for money.

NATURAL CAPITAL and INCOME

• Natural capital provides a wide variety of valuable ecosystem services including flood control, climate stabilization, maintenance of soil fertility, and even beauty and play.

• Globally, and within the bioregion, natural capital is being depleted through over-harvesting, development, poor agricultural practices, toxic contamination, and other causes.

Human capture

3 categories of Natural Capital

1. Renewable - living species and ecosystems which can be replaced by natural productivity (photosynthesis!) as fast as they are used (e.g. food crops, timber).

2. Replenishable - non-living resources which are can be continuously restored by natural processes as fast as they are used (e.g stratospheric ozone layer, groundwater).

3. Non-renewable - Resources which cannot be replenished at the same rate at which they were used. Any use of these resources

implies depletion of the stock. e.g. fossil fuels, minerals. If these resources are being

depleted we must: 1) improve efficiency of use

2) develop substitutes or 3) recycle

Resources

Perpetual Nonrenewable

Renewable

Freshair

Freshwater

Fertilesoil

Plants andanimals

(biodiversity)

Directsolar

energy

Winds, tides,

flowing water

Fossilfuels

Metallic minerals

Non- metallic

minerals

(iron, copper,

aluminum)

(clay, sand,

phosphates)

Values of Natural Capital:

• Economic value: can be determined from the market price of the goods and services it produces.

• Ecological value: have no formal market price. Photosynthesis, nitrogen-fixation, soil erosion control are essential for human existance, but are taken for granted.

• Aesthetic value: have not market price and may not provide identifiable commodities, so they are unpriced or undervalued from an economic viewpoint.

Natural Environment

SOURCES

Raw

Materials

production

Economy

Products

consumption

money

Waste

products

Natural Environment

SINKS

• Healthy ecosystems make very significant economic contributions, but often in ways that transcend conventional accounting.

• In order to maintain Natural Capital and the services that it provides, the physical basis for the productivity and diversity of nature must not be systematically deteriorated.

Years of growth

3025 15 10

5

Clear cut

Weak treesremoved

Seedlingsplanted

Natural Capital can be protected through careful

application of: • Ecological Land-Use to maintain habitat

quality and connectivity for all species.• A connected system of wildlands can

coexist with productive rural areas and towns and cities, with each part of the landscape contributing to the stability of natural capital.

• Sustainable Materials Cycles prevent the systematic contamination of living systems.

• Social Capital contributes to a culture of sufficiency easing consumption pressures on natural capital.

• Rapid population growth

• Unsustainable resource use

• Poverty

• Not including the environmental costs of economic goods and services in their market prices

• Trying to manage and simplify nature with too little knowledge about how it works

Environmentalists have identified 5 basic causes of environmental problems we face.

Through out this course you have seen that human’s are not managing the

world’s resources sustainably:• World’s population has grown to over 6.4

billion.• We’ve lost about ¼ of the world’s topsoil.• We are feeding well over twice as many people

on only 80% of the agricultural fields than were being cultivated in 1950.

• Global warming is underway.• Depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer.• Since 1950 we have cut down about 1/3 of the

forests without replacing them.• We are driving the world’s species to

extinction.

Sustainability

Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to

meet their needs.

• Sustainability is the extent to which a given interaction with the environment exploits and uses the NATURAL INCOME without causing long term deterioration of NATURAL CAPITAL.

• Harvesting renewable or replenishable resources at a rate that will be replaced by natural growth.

• Long term harvest (or pollution or destruction) rate must not exceed rate of natural capital renewal.

• “Living within the means of nature” • The depletion of essential forms of natural

capital is unsustainable.

Sustainable Yield• Rate of increase in NATURAL CAPITAL.• Amount which can be exploited without

depleting the original stock or its potential to be replenished.

• Exploitation must not affect long term productivity.

Calculation of SYSY =

total biomass at time t + 1 – total biomass at time tor

energy at time t + 1 – energy at time t

• Gain in biomass over time through growth and recruitment (addition of individuals to the population).• Can express as energy rather than biomass.

Or . . .

SY =

(annual growth + recruitment) – (annual death + emigration)

• Even with the use of the best technologies we could imagine, the productivity of Earth still has its limits, and the extent of our use of it cannot be expanded indefinitely.

• The world does not contain nearly enough resources to sustain everyone at the level of consumption that is enjoyed in the U.S., Europe and Japan.

REDUCE REUSE

RECYCLE

REDUCE resource used.

• Consume less.• Redesign manufacturing processes and

products to use less materials and energy.• Redesign manufacturing processes to

produce less waste and pollution.• Develop products that are easy to repair,

reuse, remanufacture, compost, or recycle.• Design products that last longer.• Eliminate or reduce unnecessary packaging. • Use trash taxes.

REUSE is a form of waste reduction.

• Extends resource supplies.• Keeps high-quality matter resources

from being reduced to low-quality matter waste

• Reduced energy use and pollution even more than recycling.

• Bad news is we have increasingly substituted reusable items with disposable items.

RECYCLING waste items are made into new products.

Two types of recycling • Primary or closed-looped: in which

waste discarded by consumers are recycled to produce new products of the same type.

• Secondary or downcycling: in which waste materials are converted into different and usually lower-quality products.