Critical natural capital revisited: Ecological resilience and sustainable development

The ecological sustainability trigon – A proposed conceptual framework for creating and testing management scenarios

“…In fact, there are two clearly opposite positions regarding the practical meaning of sustainability: weak and strong sustainability. Weak sustainability implies that well-being must be maintained over intergenerational time scales, assuming that natural capital and man-made capital are substitutes within specific production processes (Brand, 2009). As a consequence, weak sustainability accepts that the natural capital can be depleted, unless its requirement over time is declining (Brand, 2009).…”

“…Weak sustainability implies that well-being must be maintained over intergenerational time scales, assuming that natural capital and man-made capital are substitutes within specific production processes (Brand, 2009). As a consequence, weak sustainability accepts that the natural capital can be depleted, unless its requirement over time is declining (Brand, 2009). Conversely, strong sustainability states that natural capital and man-made capital have to be viewed as complementary.…”

“…Conversely, strong sustainability states that natural capital and man-made capital have to be viewed as complementary. As a consequence, human society must keep each type of capital intact over time, and the whole stock of natural capital has to be preserved for present and future generations in the long run (Brand, 2009). In any case, the recognition that humans, with their cultural diversity, are an integral component of ecosystems, and the foreseeable threats represented by a serious worldwide environmental degradation have put ecological sustainability in international agendas.…”

“…In fact, it is widely accepted that the maintenance of such critical natural capital is essential to environmental sustainability and sustainable development (Ekins et al, 2003) since, especially in recent centuries, societal development has been driven mostly by finite, non-renewable resources. There are at least six domains under which natural capital requires to be evaluated: socio-cultural, ecological, sustainability, ethical, economic and human survival (Brand, 2009).…”

“…Elliott et al (2007) termed the differences in degradation and recovery trajectories as hysteresis in the system. Ecological resilience has to be estimated by means of resilience surrogates (Carpenter et al, 2005), based on a comprehensive resilience analysis, including the identification of specific disturbance regimes and societal choices of the desired ecosystem services (Brand, 2009).…”