The term "Natural Capital" began being used about the same time biosphere II sealed its doors. It's how the earth's biosphere sustains us. Natural capital includes natural resources, both non-renewable (oil, coal, metal ore) and renewable (forests, fisheries, grasslands), as well as the services we receive from eco-systems (ocean water, air, topsoil).

 

As an example natural capital makes the important distinction between, a forest's value merely as wood for a pulp mill, versus the valuable services it provides. As a living system, including generating oxygen, cleaning water, preventing erosion, capturing excess carbon dioxide, serving as habitat for many species (including us). Thus while clear cutting a forest generates income for a region or country, it diminishes the natural capital for many years, and in some cases, permanently.

 

Rarely are the essential services that forests, grasslands or wetlands provide taken into account as the worlds natural capital continues to be destroyed and degraded. The world wildlife fund released a study in the Fall of 2004 estimating that humanity is consuming more than 20% more natural resources than the earth can provide.

 

Despite the enormity of the problem, it's small local decisions that have created it. Decisions to convert a 100 hectare wetland to agriculture or a 10 hectare woodlot into a housing subdivision are what result in unseen but incremental destruction of natural capital.

 

Here in Strathcona County, sprawl and speculation, combined with a hot economy, has pushed land values into the thousands of dollars per hectare range. Here the value of natural capital can't compete in the near term or, perhaps it could, if all the hidden subsidies involved in land development were included. Chief among these is the cost of infrastructure. New roads and highways, sewers, water, police and fire services, etc. If those costs and the permanent loss of the natural capital were included, the full cost of a typical house on a 40 foot lot would be something like a million dollars.

 

Since people buy what they can afford, this full cost pricing would dramatically reduce the pressure on green field development and encourage higher housing densities and development in existing urban areas.

 

There is no singular right way to protect natural capital, the important thing is to begin to experiment with ways that provide long-term protection.

 

Glen Lawrence

Councillor, Ward 7

464-8003.