Natural Capital
Natural capital is the world's stock of natural resources, which includes geology, soils, air, water and all living organisms. Some natural capital assets provide people with free goods and services, often called ecosystem services. All of these underpin our economy and society, and thus make human life possible. It is an extension of the economic notion of capital (resources which enable the production of more resources) to goods and services provided by the natural environment. For example, a well-maintained forest or river may provide an indefinitely sustainable flow of new trees or fish, whereas over-use of those resources may lead to a permanent decline in timber availability or fish stocks. Natural capital also provides people with essential services, like water catchment, erosion control and crop pollination by insects, which in turn ensure the long-term viability of other natural resources. Since the continuous supply of services from the available natural capital as ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Mangrove Swamp, Iriomote Island, Okinawa, Japan
A mangrove is a shrub or tree that grows in coastal saline or brackish water. The term is also used for tropical coastal vegetation consisting of such species. Mangroves are taxonomically diverse, as a result of convergent evolution in several plant families. They occur worldwide in the tropics and subtropics and even some temperate coastal areas, mainly between latitudes 30° N and 30° S, with the greatest mangrove area within 5° of the equator. Mangrove plant families first appeared during the Late Cretaceous to Paleocene epochs, and became widely distributed in part due to the movement of tectonic plates. The oldest known fossils of mangrove palm date to 75 million years ago. Mangroves are salt-tolerant trees, also called halophytes, and are adapted to live in harsh coastal conditions. They contain a complex salt filtration system and a complex root system to cope with saltwater immersion and wave action. They are adapted to the low-oxygen conditions of water ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Georgism
Georgism, also called in modern times Geoism, and known historically as the single tax movement, is an economic ideology holding that, although people should own the value they produce themselves, the economic rent derived from land—including from all natural resources, the commons, and urban locations—should belong equally to all members of society. Developed from the writings of American economist and social reformer Henry George, the Georgist paradigm seeks solutions to social and ecological problems, based on principles of land rights and public finance which attempt to integrate economic efficiency with social justice. Georgism is concerned with the distribution of economic rent caused by land ownership, natural monopolies, pollution rights, and control of the commons, including title of ownership for natural resources and other contrived privileges (e.g. intellectual property). Any natural resource which is inherently limited in supply can generate economic rent, but ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Creating The Next Industrial Revolution
Creation may refer to: Religion *''Creatio ex nihilo'', the concept that matter was created by God out of nothing *Creation myth, a religious story of the origin of the world and how people first came to inhabit it *Creationism, the belief that the universe was created in specific divine acts and the social movement affiliated with it *Creator deity, a deity responsible for the creation of everything that exists *Genesis creation narrative, the biblical account of creation *Creation Museum, a creationist museum in Kentucky *Creation Ministries International, a Christian apologetics organization *Creation Festival, two annual four-day Christian music festivals held in the United States Entertainment Music Albums * ''Creation'' (EP), 2016 EP by Seven Lions * ''Creation'' (John Coltrane album), 1965 * ''Creation'' (Branford Marsalis album), 2001 * ''Creation'' (Keith Jarrett album), 2015 * ''Creation'' (Archie Roach album), 2013 * ''Creation'' (The Pierces album), 2014 *''Creation'' ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Natural Capital Committee
The Natural Capital Committee (NCC) was an independent body set up in 2012, initially for a three-year period, to report to the UK Government and advise on how to value nature and to ensure England's 'natural wealth' is managed efficiently and sustainably. During its first term it produced three reports to government on the 'State of Natural Capital'. It has called on the Office for National Statistics to integrate the state of the country's natural assets (also known as natural capital) into mainstream national accounting. Having fulfilled its initial remit, the UK NCC ceased activity in March 2015, but was reformed by the new 2015 conservative government with modified Terms of Reference and a brief to continue for the life of that current parliament (i.e. up to 2020). It finally ceased to exist in December 2020. History The NCC was set up as an independent advisory Committee following a key UK GovernmenNatural Environment White Papercommitment in 2011. It initially had a thre ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Hunter Lovins
L. Hunter Lovins (née Sheldon, born February 26, 1950 in Middlebury, Vermont) is an American environmentalist, author, sustainable development proponent, co-founder of Rocky Mountain Institute, and president of the nonprofit organization Natural Capitalism Solutions. Education and career Lovins received an undergraduate degree in sociology and political science from Pitzer College in 1972, and a J.D. from Loyola Law School in 1975.Loyola Law Schoo"L. Hunter Lovins '75: Director, Natural Capitalism Academy of the Global Academy", Retrieved July 19, 2019. A practicing attorney (member of the State Bar of California), Lovins helped establish the urban forestry and environmental education group California Conservation Project (Tree People), and was their assistant director for about six years. She served as policy adviser for Friends of the Earth under David Brower.Grist staff"Hunter Lovins, thinker on sustainability, answers questions" ''Grist'', August 3, 2004. Retrieved July 25, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Amory Lovins
Amory Bloch Lovins (born November 13, 1947) is an American writer, physicist, and former chairman/chief scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute. He has written on energy policy and related areas for four decades, and served on the US National Petroleum Council, an oil industry lobbying group, from 2011 to 2018. Lovins has promoted energy efficiency, the use of renewable energy sources, and the generation of energy at or near the site where the energy is actually used. Lovins has also advocated a "negawatt revolution" arguing that utility customers don't want kilowatt-hours of electricity; they want energy services. In the 1990s, his work with Rocky Mountain Institute included the design of an ultra-efficient automobile, the Hypercar. He has provided expert testimony and published 31 books, including ''Reinventing Fire'', ''Winning the Oil Endgame'', '' Small is Profitable'', ''Brittle Power'', and ''Natural Capitalism''. Early life and education Lovins was born in Washing ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Paul Hawken
Paul Gerard Hawken (born February 8, 1946) is an American environmentalist, entrepreneur, author, economist, and activist. Biography Hawken was born in San Mateo, California, and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, where his father worked at UC Berkeley in library sciences. He attended UC Berkeley and San Francisco State University. Hawken's work includes founding ecological businesses, writing about impacts of commerce on living systems, and consulting with corporations and governments on economic development, industrial ecology, and environmental policy. Hawken was the co-founder and executive director of Project Drawdown, a non-profit that describes how global warming can be reversed. Hawken was active in the civil rights movement. He currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Writing Hawken has authored articles, op-eds, and peer-reviewed papers, and seven books, including: ''The Next Economy'' (Ballantine 1983), ''Growing a Business'' (Simon and Schuster 1987), ''Th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Natural Capitalism
''Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution'' is a 1999 book on environmental economics co-authored by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins and Hunter Lovins. It has been translated into a dozen languages and was the subject of a Harvard Business Review summary. Content In ''Natural Capitalism'' the authors describe the global economy as being dependent on natural resources and ecosystem services that nature provides. Natural Capitalism is a critique of traditional "Industrial Capitalism", saying that the traditional system of capitalism "does not fully conform to its own accounting principles. It liquidates its capital and calls it income. It neglects to assign any value to the largest stocks of capital it employs – the natural resources and living systems, as well as the social and cultural systems that are the basis of human capital." Natural capitalism recognizes the critical interdependency between the production and use of human-made capital and the maintenance a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Biosphere 2
Biosphere 2 is an American Earth system science research facility located in Oracle, Arizona. Its mission is to serve as a center for research, outreach, teaching, and lifelong learning about Earth, its living systems, and its place in the universe. It is a structure originally built to be an artificial, materially closed ecological system, or vivarium. It remains the largest closed ecological system ever created. Constructed between 1987 and 1991, Biosphere 2 was originally meant to demonstrate the viability of closed ecological systems to support and maintain human life in outer space as a substitute for Earth's biosphere. It was designed to explore the web of interactions within life systems in a structure with different areas based on various biological biomes. In addition to the several biomes and living quarters for people, there was an agricultural area and work space to study the interactions between humans, farming, technology and the rest of nature as a new kind of labo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Organisation For Economic Co-operation And Development
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; french: Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques, ''OCDE'') is an intergovernmental organization, intergovernmental organisation with 38 member countries, founded in 1961 to stimulate economic progress and world trade. It is a Forum (legal), forum whose member countries describe themselves as committed to democracy and the market economy, providing a platform to compare policy experiences, seek answers to common problems, identify good practices, and coordinate domestic and international policies of its members. The majority of OECD members are High income economy, high-income economies with a very high Human Development Index, Human Development Index (HDI), and are regarded as Developed country, developed countries. Their collective population is 1.38 billion. , the OECD member countries collectively comprised 62.2% of List of countries by GDP (nominal), global nominal GDP (US$49.6 trill ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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World Conservation Monitoring Centre
The UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) is a collaboration centre of UN Environment Programme, based in Cambridge in the United Kingdom. UNEP-WCMC has been part of UN Environment Programme since 2000, and has responsibility for biodiversity assessment and support to policy development and implementation. The World Conservation Monitoring Centre was previously an independent organisation jointly managed by IUCN, UN Environment Programme and WWF established in 1988. Prior to that, the centre was a part of the IUCN Secretariat. Areas of work The activities of UNEP-WCMC include biodiversity assessment, support to international conventions such as the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), capacity building and management of both aspatial and spatial data on species and habitats of conservation concern. UNEP-WCMC has a mandate to facilitate the delive ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Environmental Full-cost Accounting
Environmental full-cost accounting (EFCA) is a method of cost accounting that traces direct costs and allocates indirect costs by collecting and presenting information about the possible environmental, social and economical costs and benefits or advantagesin short, about the "triple bottom line"for each proposed alternative. It is also known as true-cost accounting (TCA), but, as definitions for "true" and "full" are inherently subjective, experts consider both terms problematical.See Green economics. Since costs and advantages are usually considered in terms of environmental, economic and social impacts, full or true cost efforts are collectively called the "triple bottom line". Many standards now exist in this area including Ecological Footprint, eco-labels, and the United Nations International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives approach to triple bottom line using the ecoBudget metric. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has several accredited stan ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |