“the concept of “natural capital”—valuing nature for its own sake as well as for the services it provides for people, such as clean air and water, productive soil and a stable climate”

Source: http://corporateservicecorps.org/collaborating-make-world-better/

I have found an interesting reply to Monbiot’s speech by Bartosz Bartkowski on his blog “The Sceptical Economist. A pragmatic’s blog about sustainability, economics and other interesting things.”

Read it here: http://zielonygrzyb.wordpress.com/2014/07/24/is-economic-valuation-a-neoliberal-road-to-ruin-a-response-to-george-monbiot/#comment-1902

“To sum up, I think that the main problem of George Monbiot’s argumentation against economic valuation of environmental goods and services is that he conflates the science behind economic valuation and some cherry-picked misinterpretations/misuses of it. Also, he seems to be generally “allergic” to economic concepts–I don’t see any other possibility to justify his eagerness to equate environmental economics with neoliberalism. While having some points, which I tried to appreciate in my response, I think that he generally misses the target. For sure, economic valuation is not THE road to salvation. But nor is it a “neoliberal road to ruin”.”