Restoring Natural Capital

Science, Business, and Practice

James Aronson, Suzanne J. Milton, James N. Blignaut, James Aronson, Suzanne J. Milton, James N. Blignaut

• Publisher: Island Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781597260770, 9781597260763
• eBook ISBN: 9781597267793
• Subtopic: Ecology

How can environmental degradation be stopped? How can it be reversed? And how can the damage already done be repaired? The authors of this volume argue that a two-pronged approach is needed: reducing demand for ecosystem goods and services and better management of them, coupled with an increase in supply through environmental restoration.

Restoring Natural Capital brings together economists and ecologists, theoreticians, practitioners, policy makers, and scientists from the developed and developing worlds to consider the costs and benefits of repairing ecosystem goods and services in natural and socioecological systems. It examines the business and practice of restoring natural capital, and seeks to establish common ground between economists and ecologists with respect to the restoration of degraded ecosystems and landscapes and the still broader task of restoring natural capital. The book focuses on developing strategies that can achieve the best outcomes in the shortest amount of time as it:

• considers conceptual and theoretical issues from both an economic
and ecological perspective
• examines specific strategies to foster the restoration of natural
capital and offers a synthesis and a vision of the way forward

Nineteen case studies from around the world illustrate challenges and achievements in setting targets, refining approaches to finding and implementing restoration projects, and using restoration of natural capital as an economic opportunity. Throughout, contributors make the case that the restoration of natural capital requires close collaboration among scientists from across disciplines as well as local people, and when successfully executed represents a practical, realistic, and essential tool for achieving lasting sustainable development.

PART I

Restoring Natural Capital: The Conceptual Landscape

This book on the science, business, and practice of restoring natural capital aims to establish common ground between economists and ecologists, with respect to the ecological and socioeconomic restoration of degraded ecosystems and landscapes, and the still broader task of restoring natural capital.

Irrespective of theories and ideologies, all economists agree that if one wishes to be better off in the future, one’s capital base needs to be expanded through investment. This principle applies across time and space and embraces everyone—from the smallest, poorest, and remotest household to the biggest multinational companies and nations. Concurrently, all ecologists would agree that it is the habitats and ecosystems on which individuals, populations, and species depend that maintain and nourish the diversity and, indeed, the vitality of life. If habitat destruction continues at the present pace, biological diversity, vitality, and resilience will decline; species will continue to disappear; and the flow of ecosystem goods and services will decline. By contrast, when damaged or degraded ecosystems are rehabilitated or restored, the marvelous diversity of organisms and the systems they form, with their enormous potential for adaptation, evolution, and self-organization, is much more likely to be conserved to the benefit of future human generations and, indeed, all life on the planet.

Both economists and ecologists therefore agree that any investment to broaden the (economic and ecological) base on which life depends will improve economic and ecological welfare and societal resilience. The challenge, however, is that though the principle of capital investment can be universally applied, the object of the investment is not the same. Economists focus predominantly on manufactured capital, and ecologists focus on what is broadly termed nature or what ecological economists call natural capital. Additionally, there is a problem of scale to overcome, in both time and space. At present, future and distant impacts on natural capital are discounted against present and proximal economic gains for people. This needs to change.

In this introductory section of six chapters, we provide a conceptual and contextual discussion of the new “leaping together” of pragmatically minded restoration ecologists and biologically aware economists. In the first chapter, we define natural capital and the restoration thereof. We make a special effort to explain the relationship between restoring natural capital and ecological restoration, as it is generally defined. Chapter 2 reflects on the restoration of natural capital from an ethical perspective, whereas chapters 3 and 4 consider the restoration of natural capital from an ecological economics and a mainstream economic perspective, respectively. Chapter 5 assesses the restoration challenges ahead, on a gamut of scales, in the light of the work done by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), and chapter 6 considers a practical tool to assess the level and extent of biodiversity loss and, hence, a way to estimate the restoration requirement. Together these chapters set the scene and provide the background to the various case studies presented in part 2, and to part 3, which is devoted to the development of strategies at local, regional, and global levels to promote restoration.

The fundamental notion we put forward is that the restoration of natural capital is a practical, realistic, and essential goal that requires the close collaboration of economists and ecologists. Through its application, lasting and mutually beneficial solutions can be obtained for all people and all of nature. In other words, for improved quality of life and greater hope for the future, it is vital to stop both the economic and ecological rot caused by the mismanagement and waste of biological resources and the failure to replenish our dwindling stocks of natural capital. The new vision we describe can be achieved only by natural scientists working in partnership with social scientists, forging a new path for ecologically sound, global and local economies. We call upon society’s leaders to respond to the call for a radical paradigm shift and to help usher in a new era built upon twin conceptual pillars: Economics as if nature matters, and ecology as if people matter. This will allow us to move forward toward a sustainable and desirable future.

Chapter 1

Restoring Natural Capital: Definitions and Rationale

JAMES ARONSON, SUZANNE J. MILTON, AND JAMES N. BLIGNAUT

The restoration of natural capital is arguably one of the most radical ideas to emerge in recent years, because it links two imperatives—economics and ecology—whose proponents have been at loggerheads for decades. In economically developed and developing countries alike, however, we have to acknowledge that humans have transformed ecosystems to the extent that the supply of life-essential ecosystem goods and services is seriously threatened (Wackernagel and Rees 1997). This fact is summarized by two conclusions from the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA 2005f):

Over the past 50 years, humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than in any comparable period of time in human history, largely to meet rapidly growing demands for food, fresh water, timber, fiber and fuel. This has resulted in a substantial and largely irreversible loss in the diversity of life on Earth.

The changes that have been made to ecosystems have contributed to substantial net gains in human well-being and economic development, but these gains have been achieved at growing costs in the form of the degradation of many ecosystem services, increased risks of nonlinear changes, and the exacerbation of poverty for some groups of people. These problems, unless addressed, will substantially diminish the benefits that future generations obtain from ecosystems.

We argue that natural capital has become a limiting factor for human well-being and economic sustainability (Costanza and Daly 1992; Daly and Farley 2004; Aronson, Clewell, et al. 2006; Farley and Daly 2006; Dresp 2006) and advocate that the restoration of natural capital is the most direct and effective remedy for redressing the debilitating socioeconomic and political effects of its scarcity. Conservation, and reducing waste are indispensable, but likewise the investment in the restoration of natural capital that augments the pool of natural capital stock and hence stimulates the supply (or flow) of ecosystem goods and services (Repetto 1993; Cairns 1993; Jansson et al. 1994; Clewell 2000). The restoration of natural capital includes ecological restoration, but it goes further. The restoration of natural capital also considers the socioeconomic interface between humans and the natural environment. By functioning within this interface, the restoration of natural capital builds bridges between economists and ecologists and thereby offers new alternatives for ecologically viable economic development. It also offers new hope for bridging the worrisome gaps between scientists and nonscientists and between developed and underdeveloped countries.

Definitions of Terms and Concepts

Here we define a number of key terms pertinent to the concepts of restoration and natural capital, and explain how this focus complements related approaches to ecosystem repair and raises awareness of the need to make development ecologically, socially, and economically sustainable.

Natural Capital

Generally, development and the improvement of life quality are not possible without a growing asset, or capital, base. The concept capital, however, is not homogenous since one can distinguish between five principal forms of capital (Rees 1995; MA 2005f):

• Financial capital (money or its substitutes)
• Manufactured capital (buildings, roads, and other human-produced, fixed assets)
• Human capital (individual or collective efforts and intellectual skills)
• Social capital (institutions, relationships, social networks, and shared cultural beliefs and traditions that promote mutual trust)
• Natural capital, an economic metaphor for the stock of physical and biological natural resources that consist of renewable natural capital (living species and ecosystems); nonrenewable natural capital (subsoil assets, e.g., petroleum, coal, diamonds); replenishable natural capital (e.g., the atmosphere, potable water, fertile soils); and cultivated natural capital (e.g., crops and forest plantations)

Some clarification is required to distinguish between renewable, replenishable, and cultivated natural capital. Renewable natural capital is the composition and structure (stocks) of natural, self organizing ecological systems that, through their functioning, yield a flow (or natural income) of goods and services. These flows are essential to life in general and are extremely useful to humans and all other species. Replenishable natural capital consists of stocks of nonliving resources that are continually recycled through their interaction with living resources over long periods (such as the interaction between surface mineral components and living organisms that produces fertile, stable soil). The condition of renewable natural capital stocks obviously influences the quality, quantity, and renewal rate of these essential, replenishable, natural capital stocks, and vice versa.

Cultivated natural capital arises at the dynamic interface of human, social, and natural capital. This interface produces agroecological systems and amenity plantings that may be more or less self-sustaining, depending on their design and management. Cultivated capital forms a continuum between renewable natural capital and manufactured capital and may be closer to one or the other, depending on the degree of transformation of the landscape, the genetic material, and the subsidies (e.g., energy, water, nutrients, seeding, weeding, pest control) required for maintaining the system. It is often forgotten that, in all cases, both cultivated resources and manufactured capital are derived from renewable, replenishable, and nonrenewable natural capital. This transformation of natural to human-made capital is “mining” the stock of renewable, replenishable, and nonrenewable natural capital, thereby reducing it for future use, unless it is restored where it has been used up or degraded.

Ecological Restoration and Restoration of Natural Capital

The Society for Ecological Restoration International’s Primer on Ecological Restoration (SER 2002) defines ecological restoration as “the process of assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged, or destroyed,” but it is a much broader concept. The goal of ecological restoration, according to the SER Primer, is a resilient ecosystem that is self sustaining with respect to structure, species composition, and function, while integrated into a larger landscape and congenial to “low impact” human activities. Ecological restoration “is intended to repair ecosystems with respect to their health, integrity, and self-sustainability” (SER 2002). An associated discipline is ecological engineering, which involves restoring and creating (thus, engineering) sustainable ecosystems “that have value to both humans and nature” (Mitsch and Jørgensen 2004). Lewis (2005) cogently adds that ecological engineers attempt to address both the restoration of damaged ecosystems and the creation of new sustainable systems “in a cost effective way.”

The restoration of natural capital is any activity that integrates investment in and replenishment of natural capital stocks to improve the flows of ecosystem goods and services, while enhancing all aspects of human well-being. In common with ecological restoration, natural capital restoration is intended to improve the health, integrity, and self-sustainability of ecosystems for all living organisms. However, natural capital restoration focuses on defining and maximizing the value and effort of ecological restoration for the benefit of humans, thereby mainstreaming it into daily thought and action and promoting ecosystem health and integrity. Natural capital restoration activities may include but are not limited to (1) the restoration and rehabilitation of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems; (2) ecologically sound improvements to arable lands and other lands that are managed for useful purposes; (3) improvements in the ecologically sustainable utilization of biological resources; and (4) the establishment or enhancement of socioeconomic activities and behavior that incorporate knowledge, awareness, conservation, and management of natural capital into daily activities.

Those motivated by a biotic rationale for restoration, as explained by Clewell and Aronson (2006), and whose concern lies with the perpetuation of biodiversity, may raise a concern here. They may argue that natural capital restoration’s human-centered focus will obscure an essential insight of the restoration and conservation movements—that ecosystems and all the processes and species they contain are worth restoring and preserving “for their own sake,” regardless of their economic (or other) value to humans. This is true (see chapter 2); however, in order to mainstream ecological restoration into the economy (chapter 34), it is also necessary to show how humans will benefit directly from it and how the interaction between economic and ecological systems could be improved through the restoration of natural capital.

Rehabilitation and Reallocation

In figure 1.1, rehabilitation is aligned with restoration in that both generally take an “original” (preanthropogenic era, sensu ...

Table of contents

• SOCIETY FOR ECOLOGICAL RESTORATION INTERNATIONAL
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• FOREWORD
• PREFACE
• PART I - Restoring Natural Capital: The Conceptual Landscape
• PART II - Restoring Natural Capital: Experiences and Lessons
• PART III - Restoring Natural Capital: Tactics and Strategies
• PART IV - Synthesis
• GLOSSARY
• REFERENCES
• EDITORS
• CONTRIBUTORS
• INDEX
• Island Press Board of Directors