The Little Book of Natural Capital Accounting and Finance
The value of natural capital in countries around the world has been consistently declining over the past decades. In the UK, for instance, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) initial estimates suggest that natural capital losses in this country were as high as $183 billion (in constant 2014 US$) between 2009 and 2014, indicating a drop of 32.3% in only five years (ONS, 2016c). These trends have also been found in many other countries. Figure 1 shows the trends of natural capital value between 1990 and 2010 in 19 different countries across the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa, using the most recent estimations provided by the UN University International Human Dimension Programme (UNU-IHDP) and the UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) in the Inclusive Wealth Report (UNEP&UNU-IHDP, 2014). From the figure, we can conclude that, with the exception of France, the value of natural capital in the rest of the countries is declining. When we examined the Inclusive Wealth Report data in detail, we found that this situation is actually shared by the vast majority of countries worldwide.
Many scholars agree that the generalised loss of natural capital value is mainly the result of human-induced factors, such as, overexploitation of natural resources, soil erosion, water pollution, loss of biodiversity, and increasing population. However, it is also widely accepted that the lack of accounting and financial mechanisms dedicated to the measurement and recovery of the value of natural capital has contributed to this decline).1 In the absence of robust natural capital accounting systems and support investment mechanisms, the valuation of nature stays outside the realm of economic activity and decision-making, and also prevents private enterprise and public authorities from developing strategies to reverse the declining trends witnessed today (Zhang et al., 2010; Jones, 2010). Therefore, if the value of natural capital is to be recovered, actions must be taken to develop and implement natural capital accounts that provide information on the condition of natural resources. Similarly, novel financial mechanisms able to dedicate significant investments in natural capital assets should be introduced in order to maintain and recover the value of natural capital (NCC, 2014a). Recovering natural capital value and reversing decreasing trajectories are essential to national and regional authorities in their aim to achieve sustainable development goals, they are important for the society to secure levels of well-being, and they are integral to the long-term decision-making strategies of businesses.
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