Talk:Natural capital
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[edit] Discussion
addition is necessary - maybe not complete.
It's a bit more than "land as capital" since air, watersheds, genes, etc., would all classify as natural capital. The "land" definition includes them... soil in particular. But soil is confined to land in a way that air, water, and genes are not.
It's this inadequacy that led to the theory of natural capital itself - land is a glaring exception sitting in the theory of economics. In fact Adam Smith and contemporaries made the point over and over again that everything they said didn't apply to land - that there was nothing good to be said about land ownership if the owner wasn't "improving" it.
Today we might interpret that as improving its soil sustainability, air and water filtration capacity, genetic diversity, etc., rather than simply its human housing and food production capacity. But it's the same principle... just a different valuation ethic.
When refactoring or adding I think we need to address and link to the more traditional militant conservative view of industrial behomeths who view exploitation as pre-eminent use of all god given natural resources .... this practice and view is still pre-eminent or "natural" would not be so scarce and still diminishing.
Another nugget. There is a stock fund firm or venture investment firm based in Seattle that invests in "green" firms because their analysis shows they have small consistent edge of .... 3% .... additional gain over time. I saw this on television .... illustrates Natural Capitalism's point about trends. I will google and see if I can find the firm's name.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/news/business/html98/greenf07_20000911.html
Natural capital refers to the mineral, plant, and animal formations of the Earth's biosphere when viewed as a means of production of oxygen, water filter, erosion preventer, or provider of other natural services?
I think it is not clear that air and water are part of the natural capital. Shouldn't it be added ?
It is one approach to ecosystem valuation?, an alternative to the traditional view of all non-human life as passive natural resources.
all non-human life, as well as non-living parts of the planetary system - rocks, ocean and atmosphere. An ecosystem is a group of biological communities, which share an environment. Water, air, soil, living life, including human life, interact to form the ecosystem. Not only non-human life.
- Natural Capital connects to Ecological economics and Deep Ecology, lets develop this article --Swedenborg 05:34, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
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- Can we take away "An editor has expressed a concern that the topic of this article may be unencyclopedic" tag? I see no reason to keep it on this page! --Swedenborg 21:27, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Unencyclopedic
This article reads like an essay. Example:
"However, human knowledge and understanding of the natural environment is never complete, and therefore the boundaries of natural capital expand or contract as knowledge is gained or lost."
This type of wording has no place in an encyclopedia. 67.171.34.5 06:27, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
- Topic is encyclopedic; execution is not. "Natural capital" is actually an economic term, very closely related to "natural resource". However, I agree that this article needs some heavy editing. I suggest to either merge this with natural resource or put up a {{cleanup}} tag, for a start. —Matveims 23:46, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
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- Leave Topic is encyclopedic! Agree that it needs editing. Invite critics to help to develop instead of promoting deleteationastic approach. --Swedenborg 13:42, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Can we take away unencyclopedic tag?
This article is Encyclopedic but needs cleanup and structure. I put an ecology stub notion in the end maybe that is enough? Or change the top tag to something more appropriate. I will come back later when I have some time and do some work here. --Swedenborg 09:17, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
