With the cur­rently ongo­ing World Forum on Nat­ural Cap­i­tal in Edin­burgh we have reached another peak in the dis­cus­sion about the value of nature — nat­ural cap­i­tal is all around us. As there are so many news on this, I decided to group them together into one post, so you can check all of the newest links to nat­ural cap­i­tal I have found today.

World Forum on Nat­ural Capital

First of all there’s obvi­ously the World Forum on Nat­ural Cap­i­tal itself which is co-hosted by sev­eral large nature con­ser­va­tion NGOs and an impres­sive line-up of speak­ers (see the pro­gramme here).

Nat­ural Cap­i­tal debate: Helm rebutts Mon­biot, misses target

In this arti­cle on his blog Miles King refers to the debate between George Mon­biot and Tony Juniper at the open­ing of the Forum on Nat­ural Cap­i­tal and, more pre­cisely, the response by Dieter Helm, chair­man of the Nat­ural Cap­i­tal Com­mit­tee to the con­cerns expressed once more by Monbiot:

“This morn­ing Prof Dieter Helm, Patron Saint of Nat­ural Cap­i­tal­ists, posted a rather tetchy piece in the Guardian sus­tain­able busi­ness sec­tion, huff­ing and puff­ing about why Mon­biot is wrong and Nat­ural Cap­i­tal is the only way to “save” nature, or at least pro­tect the renew­able nat­ural resources that humans depend on, in the lan­guage of economics.”

More tales from Nat­ural Cap­i­tal Won­der­land: Wood­lands and Badgers

In another arti­cle on his blog Miles King points to a report writ­ten by Andrew Lil­ico for  Wood­land Trust to quan­tify the eco­nomic value of wood­lands in the UK:

“Lil­ico looks at the mon­e­tary value of wood­lands as a pol­icy tool – and comes up with the main ben­e­fit being to “facil­i­tate hous­ing devel­op­ment”. Now given the Wood­land Trust’s cam­paign to save ancient wood­lands from threats such as err hous­ing devel­op­ment, this is econo­met­ric gym­nas­tics. Just as well he only val­ued ancient wood­land bio­di­ver­sity value a third higher than newly planted woodland.”

Con­sul­ta­tion on Draft Nat­ural Cap­i­tal Pro­to­col launched

The Nat­ural Cap­i­tal Coali­tion has launched its Draft Nat­ural Cap­i­tal Pro­to­col and sec­tor guides for pub­lic consultation:

Today offers the oppor­tu­nity to see for the first time the draft Nat­ural Cap­i­tal Pro­to­col and Sec­tor Guides as they are launched for con­sul­ta­tion at the World Forum on Nat­ural Cap­i­tal. The draft Pro­to­col and Sec­tor Guides have been devel­oped by the Nat­ural Cap­i­tal Coali­tion as a stan­dard­ized frame­work for busi­ness to mea­sure and value its impacts and depen­den­cies on nat­ural cap­i­tal and to help them inte­grate this into their deci­sion making.

The Nat­ural Cap­i­tal Coali­tion is built upon the belief that through col­lab­o­ra­tion we will go further.

The con­sul­ta­tion is there­fore an essen­tial part of the devel­op­ment process.  As well as engag­ing with the grow­ing Coali­tion mem­ber­ship, which has dou­bled in the last six months and now stands at 168 organ­i­sa­tions, the Coali­tion is estab­lish­ing an expert review panel, to lead the con­sul­ta­tion, build con­sen­sus and gain mar­ket momen­tum. The con­sul­ta­tion com­pli­ments the exist­ing busi­ness pilot pro­gram that is already under­way and includes over 50 com­pa­nies rep­re­sent­ing all geo­gra­phies and many major sectors.

The con­sul­ta­tion will run until the 26 Feb­ru­ary 2016 and will be fol­lowed by sev­eral months of fur­ther devel­op­ment prior to the launch of Ver­sion 1 in July 2016.

You can access the con­sul­ta­tion web­site and see also the related arti­cle by Mer­ca­dos de Medioam­bi­ente: Par­tic­ipa en la con­sulta sobre el Pro­to­colo del Cap­i­tal Nat­ural lan­zada por la Nat­ural Cap­i­tal Coalition

Nat­ural Cap­i­tal Impacts in Agri­cul­ture: Sup­port­ing Bet­ter Busi­ness Best Decision-Making

Mer­ca­dos de Medioam­bi­ente have also pub­lishes another arti­cle on the impacts of nat­ural cap­i­tal in agri­cul­ture: Los impactos del cap­i­tal nat­ural en la agri­cul­tura(in Span­ish)

“La Orga­ni­zación de las Naciones Unidas para la Agri­cul­tura y la Ali­mentación (FAO) ha edi­tado un informe que advierte que existe una desconex­ión alar­mante en muchos países entre el pre­cio al por menor de los ali­men­tos y su ver­dadero coste de pro­duc­ción. Esto con­duce a que los ali­men­tos pro­duci­dos con un ele­vado coste medioam­bi­en­tal en forma de emi­siones de gases de efecto inver­nadero (GEI), con­t­a­m­i­nación del agua y del aire y destruc­ción de hábi­tats puede pare­cer más barata que otras alter­na­ti­vas que apues­tan por pro­ducir­los de man­era sostenible.”

Coca-Cola, Apple, Dow see fer­tile ground for invest­ing in nat­ural capital