Summary on natural capital
Topic: Natural capital
by Robin, 2018 Cohort
Note: This entry was created in 2018, when the task was to “summarise a key reading”, and so may not represent a good example to model current primer entries on.
Natural Capitalism can be defined as any economic system that incentivises profit based on proper care of the environment. Natural Capitalism assumes that goods and services have a value apart from their potential sale price on the market.
The reading is a chapter from the book Natural Capitalism by P.Hawken, A.Lovins and H.Lovins published in year 1999. The chapters main topic is waste, which is split up into four distinctive topics. They address the amount of waste that exists, wasting people, lost wealth and the waste as a system. Waste consists of anything in any form that is unusable, thus being worthless, in the state of highest entropy.
Biological processes are governed by feedback loops, meaning that the elements are constantly recycled and reused. Thus, there exist no form of waste in a biological system.
In contrast, industrial production processes create waste. Resources are being used up and products are thrown away or burned after use, creating waste in the form of components that do not naturally recycle. The environmental feedback is being largely ignored. This means that industrial waste is ever accumulating.
The ecological footprint of many products that we consume on a regular basis far exceeds the value of the actual product. For example, the amount of waste generated to produce a semiconductor chip is over 100000 times its weight.
The amount of waste that exists nowadays is shocking and its rapidly increasing. To grasp some numbers: total annual wastes in the USA in 1999 exceeded 22 billion tons of material and another 110 billion tons of wastewater. This is the equivalent of 500 tons of material per person per year. Less than 2% of this waste stream is being recycled. These are only numbers from the USA, there are 21 times more people on the planet.
Peoples lives are wasted by society. A society that wastes its resources wastes its people. Nearly 30 percent of the worlds labor force cannot support themselves with their current jobs, or cannot work. Instead of using more natural capital and fewer people, which has been done for many decades, more people should work and they should work less, while resources are being conserved. Overproductivity can exhaust a workforce, thus the assumption that greater productivity would lead to greater well-being and leisure is no longer valid.
Wasted money represents the money spent where the buyer gets no value. Simple example is sitting in a traffic jam. Resources show that roughly 50 percent of GDP is connected to some form of waste. Crime, lawsuits, and health problems for example increase the value of the GDP, while its value for society is clearly negative, thus making the GDP a very problematic measure of life quality. In fact, the net growth has come to a standstill.
The system and way of life of nowadays society increase in complexity and often with increased complexity comes an increase in waste, in any form. The generated waste is often not visible with our standard measurement procedures, thus making it hard to grasp the depth of this complex matter.
In conclusion, these wastes are the symptoms of one problem: using too many resources to make too few people more productive. It has served well in the past, but is no longer applicable in the present or future. A radical change in peoples mindset and governing systems is inevitable to succeed in tackling the problem and assuring a sustainable future for everyone. The efforts of governments, civil societies and businesses together with the UN undertake a step to a more prosperous future with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development[1].
[1] http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/development-agenda/
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