Natural Capital Accounts and Public Policy Decisions: Findings From a Survey

Abstract

The initiatives in natural capital accounting have multiplied in the recent years, particularly concerning ecosystem accounts. Yet, natural capital accounting has been rarely used to inform public policy decisions. Based on a survey for statistical offices and ministries and independent experts worldwide, we confirm that there is very little use of natural capital accounts for public policy decisions and, more so, in developing countries. The most relevant obstacles are the lack of political support by key people and institutional leadership unable to promote policy use by other ministries. Concerning developing countries, the factor which is considered as the most relevant in preventing the use of natural capital accounts for policy making is the stage of development of the country. In addition, respondents from statistical institutes and developing countries are particularly concerned about institutional obstacles and, to a lesser extent, data availability and cooperation. Respondents from ministries and independent experts are particularly concerned about design obstacles. A key result of the survey is the need to evaluate the value-added of natural capital accounts with respect to statistics. Most probably, natural capital accounts will only be integrated in national accounts in the aftermath of a major environmental disaster.

The effect of exports on a wealth of a country: a comment on the role of natural capital in the Amazon basin

“…This concept can also be understood as an economic production factor. If capital is the value of discounted future benefits or capital can be defined as physical systems with capacities and resilience, so natural resources can be considered part of a country's fixed capital stock (Recuero Virto et al, 2018). As a result, the rise of natural resource-based sovereign wealth funds among abundant nature resources economies is increasingly considered an important vehicle for improving their long-run economic performance (Barbier, 2019).…”

“…Besides provisioning material necessary for comfort and profit as food, water, timber, and fiber, nature provides regulating services, by providing natural protection against flood, drought, degradation, and disease; cultural services, by offering creational, aesthetic, and spiritual benefits and also supporting services such as soil formation, photosynthesis, and nutrient cycling (Patil, 2012). These services are known as ecosystem services, which can be described as the outcome of biological, geochemical and physical processes and components that take place within an ecosystem and that are available to people and may not be easily substituted by human and reproducible capital (Recuero Virto et al, 2018;Barbier 2019).…”

“…Howe-PRACS: Revista Eletrônica de Humanidades do Curso de Ciências Sociais da UNIFAP https://periodicos.unifap.br/index.php/ pracs ISSN 1984-4352 Macapá, v. 13, n. 2, p. 17-30, jul./dez. 2020 ver, in economic theory, one of the most disputed subjects is the monetary valuation of natural capital, which attributes more relevance to costs and benefits in the present than in the future (Recuero Virto et al, 2018). Biodiversity, for example, may be both an asset and a benefit (Mace et al, 2015).…”

“…In other words, capital maintenance becomes the focus of accounting for our ability to meet the sustainability criterion (Helm, 2014). Recuero Virto et al (2018) defines natural capital accounts as the (economic-)environmental accounts that refer to the statistics that can be integrated with national economic accounts which enable to have joint analyses. They can be used for macroeconomic and sectoral policymaking, provides time series data produced on a regular basis which enables analyses of trends over time and tools that facilitates joint analyses of environmental and economic data.…”

“…supports this concept of natural capital as the sum of exhaustible resources, renewable resources, and includes what are called today as the regulating ecosystem services (climate, hydrological cycles, etc.). RecueroVirto et al (2018) affirms that natural capital relates both to…”