Natural Capitalism

Author: Paul Hawken
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316031534
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 387

Book Description
There are no more reespected voices in the environmental movement than these authors, true counselors on the direction of twenty-first-century business. With hundreds of thousands of books sold worldwide, they have set the agenda for rational, ecologically sound industrial development. In this inspiring book they define a superior & sustainable form of capitalism based on a system that radically raises the productivity of nature's dwindling resources. Natural Capitalism shows how cutting-edge businesses are increasing their earnings, boosting growth, reducing costs, enhancing competitiveness, & restoring the earth by harnessing a new design mentality. The authors offer dozens of examples of businesses that are making fourfold or even tenfold gains in efficiency, from self-heating & self-cooling buildings to 200-miles-per-gallon cars, while ensuring that workers aren't downsized out of their jobs. This practical blueprint shows how making resources more productive will create the next industrial revolution

Natural Capital

Author: Dieter Helm
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300213948
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 291

Book Description
Natural capital is what nature provides to us for free. Renewables—like species—keep on coming, provided we do not drive them towards extinction. Non-renewables—like oil and gas—can only be used once. Together, they are the foundation that ensures our survival and well-being, and the basis of all economic activity. In the face of the global, local, and national destruction of biodiversity and ecosystems, economist Dieter Helm here offers a crucial set of strategies for establishing natural capital policy that is balanced, economically sustainable, and politically viable. Helm shows why the commonly held view that environmental protection poses obstacles to economic progress is false, and he explains why the environment must be at the very core of economic planning. He presents the first real attempt to calibrate, measure, and value natural capital from an economic perspective and goes on to outline a stable new framework for sustainable growth. Bristling with ideas of immediate global relevance, Helm’s book shifts the parameters of current environmental debate. As inspiring as his trailblazing The Carbon Crunch, this volume will be essential reading for anyone concerned with reversing the headlong destruction of our environment.

Green Growth That Works

Author: Lisa Ann Mandle
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1642830038
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 334

Book Description
Rapid economic development has been a boon to human well-being. It has lifted millions out of poverty, raised standards of living, and increased life expectancies. But economic development comes at a significant cost to natural capital—the fertile soils, forests, coastal marshes, farmland—that support all life on earth, including our own. The dilemma of our times is to figure out how to improve the human condition without destroying nature’s. If ecosystems collapse, so eventually will human civilization. One answer is inclusive green growth—the efficient use of natural resources. Inclusive green growth minimizes pollution and strengthens communities against natural disasters while reducing poverty through improved access to health, education, and services. Its genius lies in working with nature rather than against it. Green Growth That Works is the first practical guide to bring together pragmatic finance and policy tools that can make investment in natural capital both attractive and commonplace. The authors present six mechanisms that demonstrate a range of approaches used around the globe to conserve and restore earth’s myriad ecosystems, including: Government subsidies Regulatory-driven mitigation Voluntary conservation Water funds Market-based transactions Bilateral and multilateral payments Through a series of real-world case studies, the book addresses questions such as: How can we channel economic incentives to make conservation and restoration desirable? What approaches have worked best? How can governments, businesses, NGOs, and individuals work together successfully? Pioneered by leading scholars from the Natural Capital Project, this valuable compendium of proven techniques can guide agencies and organizations eager to make green growth work anywhere in the world.

Restoring Natural Capital

Author: James Aronson
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1597267791
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 400

Book Description
How can environmental degradation be stopped? How can it be reversed? And how can the damage already done be repaired? The authors of this volume argue that a two-pronged approach is needed: reducing demand for ecosystem goods and services and better management of them, coupled with an increase in supply through environmental restoration. Restoring Natural Capital brings together economists and ecologists, theoreticians, practitioners, policy makers, and scientists from the developed and developing worlds to consider the costs and benefits of repairing ecosystem goods and services in natural and socioecological systems. It examines the business and practice of restoring natural capital, and seeks to establish common ground between economists and ecologists with respect to the restoration of degraded ecosystems and landscapes and the still broader task of restoring natural capital. The book focuses on developing strategies that can achieve the best outcomes in the shortest amount of time as it: • considers conceptual and theoretical issues from both an economic and ecological perspective • examines specific strategies to foster the restoration of natural capital and offers a synthesis and a vision of the way forward Nineteen case studies from around the world illustrate challenges and achievements in setting targets, refining approaches to finding and implementing restoration projects, and using restoration of natural capital as an economic opportunity. Throughout, contributors make the case that the restoration of natural capital requires close collaboration among scientists from across disciplines as well as local people, and when successfully executed represents a practical, realistic, and essential tool for achieving lasting sustainable development.

Earth at Risk

Author: Claude Henry
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 023154491X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 498

Book Description
We are squandering our planet’s natural capital—its biodiversity, water and soil, and climate stability—at a blistering pace. Major changes must be made to steer our planet and people away from our current, doomed course. Though technology has been one of the drivers of the current trend of unsustainable development, it is also one of the essential tools for remedying it. Earth at Risk maps out the necessary transition to sustainability, detailing the innovations in science and technology, along with law, institutional design, and economics, that can and must be put to use to avert environmental catastrophe. Claude Henry and Laurence Tubiana begin with a measure of the costs of ecological damage—the erosion of biodiversity; air, water, and soil pollution; and the wide-reaching effects of climate change—and then consider the solutions that are either now available or close on the horizon and that may lead to a more sustainable global trajectory. What community-driven or market-based tools can be used to promote sustainable development? How can renewable energy and energy storage advances help us decrease our use of fossil fuels? How can we substitute agroecology for the damaging chemical methods of industrialized agriculture? Is international agreement on climate goals possible? Building on the experience of the most significant climate negotiation of the decade, Earth at Risk shows what a world organized along the principles of sustainability could look like, no matter how optimistic it may seem at the present moment. Though formidable obstacles remain to the realization of this significant transition, Henry and Tubiana present the case for collective initiatives and change that build momentum for implementation and action.

Investing in Natural Capital

Author: A.-M. Jansson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 532

Book Description
The results of a workshop held following the second biannual conference of the International Society for Ecological Economics, Investing in Natural Capital emphasizes the essential connections between natural ecosystems and human socioeconomic systems, and the importance of ensuring that both remain resilient.

Natural Capital

Author: Peter Kareiva
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199588996
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 395

Book Description
In 2005, The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) provided the first global assessment of the world's ecosystems and ecosystem services. It concluded that recent trends in ecosystem change threatened human wellbeing due to declining ecosystem services. This bleak prophecy has galvanized conservation organizations, ecologists, and economists to work toward rigorous valuations of ecosystem services at a spatial scale and with a resolution that can inform public policy. The editors have assembled the world's leading scientists in the fields of conservation, policy analysis, and resource economics to provide the most intensive and best technical analyses of ecosystem services to date. A key idea that guides the science is that the modelling and valuation approaches being developed should use data that are readily available around the world. In addition, the book documents a toolbox of ecosystem service mapping, modeling, and valuation models that both The Nature Conservancy and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) are beginning to apply around the world as they transform conservation from a biodiversity only to a people and ecosystem services agenda. The book addresses land, freshwater, and marine systems at a variety of spatial scales and includes discussion of how to treat both climate change and cultural values when examining tradeoffs among ecosystem services.

A Finer Future

Author: L. Hunter Lovins
Publisher: New Society Publishers
ISBN: 1771422874
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 492

Book Description
The blueprint for an inspiring regenerative economy that avoids collapse and works for people and the planet. Humanity is in a race with catastrophe. Is the future one of global warming, 65 million migrants fleeing failed states, soaring inequality, and grid-locked politics? Or one of empowered entrepreneurs and innovators working towards social change, leveling the playing field, and building a world that works for everyone? While the specter of collapse looms large, A Finer Future demonstrates that humanity has a chance - just - to thread the needle of sustainability and build a regenerative economy through a powerful combination of enlightened entrepreneurialism, regenerative economy, technology, and innovative policy. The authors - world leaders in business, economics, and sustainability - gather the environmental economics evidence, outline the principles of a regenerative economy, and detail a policy roadmap to achieving it, including: Transforming finance and corporations Reimagining energy, agriculture, ecosystems, and the nature of how we work Enhancing human well-being Delivering a world that respects ecosystems and human community. Charting the course to a regenerative economy is the most important work facing humanity and A Finer Future provides the essential blueprint for business leaders, entrepreneurs, environmentalists, politicians, policymakers, and others working to create a world that works for people and the planet. AWARDS SILVER | 2020 Eric Zencey Prize SILVER | 2018 Nautilus Book Awards: Ecology & Environment BRONZE | 2018 Foreword INDIES: Business & Economics

Natural Resources as Capital

Author: Larry Karp
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262534053
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 433

Book Description
An introduction to the concepts and tools of natural resource economics, including dynamic models, market failures, and institutional remedies. This introduction to natural resource economics treats resources as a type of capital; their management is an investment problem requiring forward-looking behavior within a dynamic setting. Market failures are widespread, often associated with incomplete or nonexistent property rights, complicated by policy failures. The book covers standard resource economics topics, including both the Hotelling model for nonrenewable resources and models for renewable resources. The book also includes some topics in environmental economics that overlap with natural resource economics, including climate change. The text emphasizes skills and intuition needed to think about dynamic models and institutional remedies in the presence of both market and policy failures. It presents the nuts and bolts of resource economics as applied to nonrenewable resources, including the two-period model, stock-dependent costs, and resource scarcity. The chapters on renewable resources cover such topics as property rights as an alternative to regulation, the growth function, steady states, and maximum sustainable yield, using fisheries as a concrete setting. Other, less standard, topics covered include microeconomic issues such as arbitrage and the use of discounting; policy problems including the “Green Paradox”; foundations for policy analysis when market failures are important; and taxation. Appendixes offer reviews of the relevant mathematics. The book is suitable for use by upper-level undergraduates or, with the appendixes, masters-level courses.

Assetization

Author: Kean Birch
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262539179
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 339

Book Description
How the asset—anything that can be controlled, traded, and capitalized as a revenue stream—has become the primary basis of technoscientific capitalism. In this book, scholars from a range of disciplines argue that the asset—meaning anything that can be controlled, traded, and capitalized as a revenue stream—has become the primary basis of technoscientific capitalism. An asset can be an object or an experience, a sum of money or a life form, a patent or a bodily function. A process of assetization prevails, imposing investment and return as the key rationale, and overtaking commodification and its speculative logic. Although assets can be bought and sold, the point is to get a durable economic rent from them rather than make a killing on the market. Assetization examines how assets are constructed and how a variety of things can be turned into assets, analyzing the interests, activities, skills, organizations, and relations entangled in this process. The contributors consider the assetization of knowledge, including patents, personal data, and biomedical innovation; of infrastructure, including railways and energy; of nature, including mineral deposits, agricultural seeds, and “natural capital”; and of publics, including such public goods as higher education and “monetizable social ills.” Taken together, the chapters show the usefulness of assetization as an analytical tool and as an element in the critique of capitalism. Contributors Thomas Beauvisage, Kean Birch, Veit Braun, Natalia Buier, Béatrice Cointe, Paul Robert Gilbert, Hyo Yoon Kang, Les Levidow, Kevin Mellet, Sveta Milyaeva, Fabian Muniesa, Alain Nadaï, Daniel Neyland, Victor Roy, James W. Williams