Natural Capital

Natural capital refers to the ecological resources used in economic production and consumption, such as fertile land, elements from the Earth’s crust, atmospheric gasses, bodies of water, and plant and animal species. The concept of natural capital has been developed by advocates of sustainable development and sustainable enterprise management to emphasize the dependence of all economic activity on these naturally occurring resources and the ecological systems of life that they support. Natural capital has quantifiable economic value, either in terms of its potential to enable the production of goods and services or in terms of its ability to be traded as a commodity. However, unlike traditional capital, natural capital is thought to have a kind of primary importance in that its conservation and protection is ...