Capitalizing on Nature Ecosystems as Natural Assets

The basic unit of nature – the ecosystem – is a special form of wealth, which we can think of as a stock of natural capital. However, perhaps because this capital is free, we have tended to view it as limitless, abundant and always available for our use, exploitation and conversion. Capitalizing on Nature shows how modeling ecosystems as natural capital can help us to analyze the economic behavior that has led to the overuse of so much ecological wealth. It explains how this concept of ecosystem as natural capital sheds light on a number of important issues, including landscape conversion, ecological restoration, ecosystem resilience and collapse, spatial benefits and payments for ecosystem services. The book concludes by focusing on major policy challenges that need to be overcome in order to avert the worsening problem of ecological scarcity and how we can fund novel financing mechanisms for global conservation.

List of figures; List of tables; List of boxes; Preface; Acknowledgements; 1. Ecological scarcity as an economic problem; 2. Ecosystem services and ecological landscapes; 3. The basic natural asset model; 4. Spatial variation in ecosystems; 5. The open economy; 6. Ecological collapse; 7. The way ahead; 8. Policies in the age of ecological scarcity; Index.

Throughout our history we have tended to view ecosystems as limitless, abundant and always available for our use, exploitation and conversion. This book shows how modeling ecosystems as natural capital can help us to analyze the economic behavior that has led to the overuse of so much ecological wealth.

Edward B. Barbier is the John S. Bugas Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics and Finance, University of Wyoming. He has over twenty-five years' experience as an environmental and resource economist, working mainly on the economics of environment and development issues. He is the author of many books on environmental policy, including Natural Resources and Economic Development (2005), A Global Green New Deal (2010) and Scarcity and Frontiers: How Economies Have Developed Through Natural Resource Exploitation (2010), all published by Cambridge University Press.