Natural Capital Approaches: Shifting the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration from Aspiration to Reality

My most recent publication is Natural capital approaches: shifting the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration from aspiration to reality for Restoration Ecology. I feel humbled and privileged to have collaborated on this paper with world leaders in developing the natural capital concept: Catherine A. Farrell, James Aronson, Gretchen C. Daily, Lars Hein, Carl Obst, and Jane C. Stout. I'm particularly happy that this paper directly addresses two persistent misconceptions that some environmentalists use, in good faith, to critique the natural capital concept: Firstly, that the concept somehow "puts nature up for sale", when the truth is the reverse: by revealing the true costs of degrading ecosystems, blindly ignored by conventional economics, the concept provides tools to guide us towards truly sustainable policies; secondly, that the concept is inherently 'capitalist', when natural capital, like other forms of capital, simply refers to stocks that yield a flow of services and benefits that is necessary to all members of society, and all social systems. Who controls those stocks, and how, is an entirely separate issue, though a very important one.