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Why do we need to restore natural capital?
Ultimately all economies depend on the flow of natural goods and services from natural
environments. Over the space of a few decades, much of the world's natural resource base had
been depleted through the push for financial gain and growth by modern economies.
Many dramatic examples of the results of this depletion can be found from around the world. Entire villages have
been buried beneath mudslides caused by inappropriate exploitation of forests on mountain slopes.
Deep-rooted and non-native trees have been planted extensively and have removed groundwater
that is critically needed for agricultural production.
Forests are harvested for fuel wood using methods which destroyed the habitat required by insects and
other animals that pollinate crops and control crop pests. Topsoil is being lost as
a result of vegetation removal and poor farming methods. This lack of vegetation cover means that
floods are increasing in severity. Drinking water is becoming scarce.
Saline groundwater rises to the surface where it ruins productive land.
People suffer, and the situation continues with increasing effects on the local population with
flow-ons to all economies.
Economic development could — and should — be conducted in a way that provides potable water,
arable land, and sources of energy and materials that can sustain local communities indefinitely
from one generation to the next. To accomplish this goal, development initiatives must protect
landscapes, consisting of both natural areas and productive lands. In addition, degraded
systems must be restored or revitalized to generate essential natural goods and services
needed to sustain local economies.
New strategies are sorely needed for local people to implement programs to augment flows
of natural goods and services for their communities on a sustainable basis and to enrich their
quality of life. Such activity builds social capital and in turn strengthens local communities.
Economists who specialize in environmental issues refer to landscapes consisting of
natural areas, productive agricultural lands, or other productive systems as stocks of
natural capital. Conservationists whose intent is to protect biodiversity and otherwise
conserve Nature call these stocks ecosystems, but they are really the same thing.
Increased natural capital means a better local economy. More intact ecosystems mean better
conservation of nature. Both environmentally minded economists and ecologists
share a common purpose, to maintain natural landscape. The amount of natural capital is generally
in short supply, because there is always demand for land to be intensively developed for
other purposes. Strategies for protecting and increasing stocks of natural capital
require the development of appropriate technologies and the careful nurturing of trust and
commitment within the local community. The latter includes a heightened awareness of the
economic value of stocks of natural capital to people’s lives and to
those who will succeed them in future generations.
What are we doing to help?
Specifically, the RNC Alliance is launching a massive effort to restore natural capital
throughout most of the underdeveloped regions of the world and to increase knowledge
of RNC world-wide so that it becomes a fundamental way of life for everyone everywhere.
In the search for an appropriate, feasible, and effective remedy to these negative economic
and environmental excesses, Lester Brown (2006) suggested a three-pronged strategy in
Plan B 2.0:
Rescuing a Planet under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble:
(1) a restructuring of the global economy so that it can sustain civilization;
(2) an all-out effort to eradicate poverty, stabilize population, and restore hope,
in order to elicit participation of developing countries and
(3) a systematic effort to restore natural systems.
We concur with Lester Brown’s recommendations, and we are prepared to implement
programs that squarely address some of them. Restoring natural capital fulfills the
third prong of Lester Brown’s strategy, to restore natural systems
in a systematic effort.
RNC is an essential step in the eradication of poverty, as called for in the second
prong in Lester Brown’s strategy. RNC programs elicit participation at the local level in
developing countries and they provide hope. RNC will not directly lead to population economic
stabilisation, but it is fully complimentary to programs that address that issue.
RNC activities contribute in a vital way at the local level for the
restructuring of the global economy in a way that realises the promise of
economic sustainability, which is Lester Brown’s first prong.
In short, RNC fully addresses Lester Brown’s third prong, substantially addresses
much of the second, and strongly contributes to the first.
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