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What on Earth Can We Learn From the Dilemmas of Natural Capital?
Topic: Natural capital
by Privthi, 2019 Cohort
What is Natural Capital?#
Natural capital is the spectrum of physical assets within the natural environment that deliver economic value through ecosystem services’- (Voora & Venema, 2008), more simply it is the physical world around us from which we derive economic value. Beginning with the earth’s soil, water and air, it is also the microsystems that govern our planet’s macro-ecosystem like the pollination of bumblebees and the photosynthesis of
How do Complexity and Natural Capital relate?#
Nature will always create systems more complex than we can hope to conjure yet what makes natural capital management most complex is the blurring of disciplines that occur when financial, political and even religious perspectives on natural systems, which are inherently scientific, must be taken into consideration. Firstly, what makes something complex?
Complexity is an attribute of any system, varying in scale. There are many factors that scale complexity but traditionally we recognise the number of variables interacting within a system, the number of layers between the microscopic elements of a system and its macroscopic behaviour, the time delay between interactions within the system and the resulting emergent behaviour of the global system and the tendency of a given system to change state altogether. Measuring these factors, we consistently find natural capital systems uniquely complex; climate change, a natural capital issue, is likely humanity’s most complex problem.
How does Natural Capital help us Unravel Complexity?#
An idea used for managing natural capital which may allow us to better tackle complexity as an attribute of any given system is ‘boundary work’. This concept refers to the distinct demarcation of different fields of knowledge applied in a system. An example could be water as a ‘boundary object’ in the Murray-Darling basin. The same physical resource means different things to irrigators, government water management, fisheries and ecologists. Instead of managing the Murray-Darling water system generally, a more efficient solution might be to segregate the system into how it relates to the different stakeholders and allow experts to define their own version of the system. This allows for depth and objectivity in analysis of the system and better prioritisation of its fundamental issues; these benefits in reducing complexity are not exclusive to natural capital. This approach has been criticised for polarising stakeholders but there is still merit to the methodology with the assistance of the nascent discipline of ‘Integration and Implementation Sciences’.
Finally, the most realisable way in which natural capital can be used to unravel complexity is through the observation of how complexity has unfolded historically in natural capital. Much of all scientific research, from palaeontologists unfolding the shift between Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, to microbiologists reasoning consequences of bacteria adaptations in response to advancements in antibiotics, aim to simplify the complexity of some system. As we have observed, systems may differ in their details yet the characteristics that make them complex are parallel. We must use our historical understanding of different system complexities as analogies to unravel the complexities of new unique problems.
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Disclaimer#
This content has been contributed by a student as part of a learning activity.
If there are inaccuracies, or opportunities for significant improvement on this topic, feedback is welcome on how to improve the resource.
You can improve articles on this topic as a student in "Unravelling Complexity", or by including the amendments in an email to: Chris.Browne@anu.edu.au
What is Natural Capital?#
Natural capital is the spectrum of physical assets within the natural environment that deliver economic value through ecosystem services’- (Voora & Venema, 2008), more simply it is the physical world around us from which we derive economic value. Beginning with the earth’s soil, water and air, it is also the microsystems that govern our planet’s macro-ecosystem like the pollination of bumblebees and the photosynthesis of
How do Complexity and Natural Capital relate?#
Nature will always create systems more complex than we can hope to conjure yet what makes natural capital management most complex is the blurring of disciplines that occur when financial, political and even religious perspectives on natural systems, which are inherently scientific, must be taken into consideration. Firstly, what makes something complex?
Complexity is an attribute of any system, varying in scale. There are many factors that scale complexity but traditionally we recognise the number of variables interacting within a system, the number of layers between the microscopic elements of a system and its macroscopic behaviour, the time delay between interactions within the system and the resulting emergent behaviour of the global system and the tendency of a given system to change state altogether. Measuring these factors, we consistently find natural capital systems uniquely complex; climate change, a natural capital issue, is likely humanity’s most complex problem.
How does Natural Capital help us Unravel Complexity?#
An idea used for managing natural capital which may allow us to better tackle complexity as an attribute of any given system is ‘boundary work’. This concept refers to the distinct demarcation of different fields of knowledge applied in a system. An example could be water as a ‘boundary object’ in the Murray-Darling basin. The same physical resource means different things to irrigators, government water management, fisheries and ecologists. Instead of managing the Murray-Darling water system generally, a more efficient solution might be to segregate the system into how it relates to the different stakeholders and allow experts to define their own version of the system. This allows for depth and objectivity in analysis of the system and better prioritisation of its fundamental issues; these benefits in reducing complexity are not exclusive to natural capital. This approach has been criticised for polarising stakeholders but there is still merit to the methodology with the assistance of the nascent discipline of ‘Integration and Implementation Sciences’.
Finally, the most realisable way in which natural capital can be used to unravel complexity is through the observation of how complexity has unfolded historically in natural capital. Much of all scientific research, from palaeontologists unfolding the shift between Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, to microbiologists reasoning consequences of bacteria adaptations in response to advancements in antibiotics, aim to simplify the complexity of some system. As we have observed, systems may differ in their details yet the characteristics that make them complex are parallel. We must use our historical understanding of different system complexities as analogies to unravel the complexities of new unique problems.