“In recent decades considerable effort has been invested into describing and identifying the planet’s natural environment in terms that can be appreciated and integrated into the A place to do business language of economics and finance.
From the 1997 work of Robert Constanza et al onwards, the TEEB coalition and the Natural Capital Coalition, to the multi-capitals approaches to accounting and reporting that are forming part of efforts by organisations such as the SASB (Sustainability Accounting Standards Board) and the IIRC (International Integrated Reporting Council). Each is seeking to quantify and therefore consider the value of natural systems and their outputs in comparable financial terms.
I have written extensively on these approaches – mostly from the perspective of a critical friend rather than a wide-eyed fan, mostly because I feel that the conceptualisation of natural and social capital into economic terms will lead to a commodification of nature (a financialisation of the planet) unless there is radical change to the nature and purpose of global markets (the planetisation of finance).
In order to move beyond a critical analysis of the pros and cons of the multi-capitals approach it seems to me that there is a simpler pre-existing conceptual vehicle that could be adopted to provide a forward looking perspective on the value of the planet and its assets (natural, human, built and otherwise)…”
Read on at: terrafiniti
