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Conservation priorities and extractive industries in Africa
Published in Saleem H. Ali, Kathryn Sturman, Nina Collins, Africa’s Mineral Fortune, 2018
Mahlette Betre, Marielle Canter Weikel, Romy Chevallier, Janet Edmond, Rosimeiry Portela, Zachary Wells, Jennifer Blaha
Mitigating these impacts has become a central goal among civil society, environmental regulators, and leading extractive companies. Environmental and social impact assessments (ESIAs) are the prevailing tool used by governments and companies for evaluating projects, often driven by regulation in environment or mining codes. Impacts are identified, options to modify the project are assessed, and the project is either granted or denied a license. In many cases, projects’ impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services, and the consequences of these effects on human well-being, are not well understood; these critical interdependencies among the impact of mining, biodiversity, and affected stakeholders are often overlooked.47 An ecosystem services approach to ESIAs advocates for a fuller understanding of both the socioeconomic dimensions of a project’s environmental impacts and the implications of ecosystem change for affected stakeholders.48 This approach provides a holistic, cross-sectoral, and integrated framework for assessing risks and impacts, as opposed to individually assessing each impact area separately.49 Companies seeking to apply this approach are using tools such as “Weaving Ecosystem Services into Impact Assessment” and/or the “Natural Capital Protocol” to measure the impact of the business and its dependencies on natural capital, and to make decisions accordingly.50
Sustainability Analytics and Decision Execution
Published in Ram Ramanan, Introduction to Sustainability Analytics, 2018
The current pace of growth of our highly connected global economy threatens the availability of ecosystem services. The triple value model432 (Figure 3.6) was first developed for the OECD. This framework explicitly defines the linkages and value flows among industrial, environmental, and societal systems and serves as a basis to construct policy-simulation models. Industrial systems use environmental resources to meet societal needs. They extract energy and materials from the environment, and build and deliver products and services to society and plow back wastes to the environment. Economic capital or industrial productive capacity creates and delivers economic and social value, and often environmental value in protecting the environment and restoring natural capital. Societal systems consume the outputs from industrial productive capacity and recycle wastes to the industrial system and discharge generated wastes to the environment. They provide the workforce (human capital), and the consumers (social capital), for the creation and use of the products and services, and also benefit and perhaps suffer in terms of human health and well-being from the economic activities. Societal governance to manage market externalities helps protect the environment and restore natural capital.
Conclusion
Published in Sigrun M. Wagner, Business and Environmental Sustainability, 2020
In order to adopt such a triple top line approach and to become truly sustainable in the future, companies need to take a strong sustainability stance that is regenerative as it protects and restores natural capital rather than a weak sustainability standpoint, where natural capital is only one of several types of capital that can be substituted with other types, whether constructed, social, manufactured, cultural or financial.7 The difference between the two types of sustainability is perhaps best expressed in the Orwellian-style phrase, “all capitals are created equal except natural capital, which is more equal than others” (Sheldon 2011: 538).
A perspective of sustainable livelihood framework in analysis of sustainability of rural community livelihoods: evidence from Migori River watershed in Kenya
Published in International Journal of River Basin Management, 2023
Stephen Balaka Opiyo, Godwin Opinde, Sammy Letema
The asset pentagon, consisting of five types of assets/capitals (natural, financial, human, physical, and social) that are deemed to underpin livelihoods at the level of the individual, household, and village, is at the core of the framework (Kedir, 2015). Natural Capital refers to the stock of natural resources like land, water and forestry, from which ecological goods and services that sustain livelihoods are generated (Scoones, 2009). Financial Capital encompasses all economic instruments and services employed by individuals or households to pursue multiple livelihood choices (Morse & McNamara, 2013). Human Capital refers to the knowledge base, skills set, labor capacity, and healthfulness that collectively allow individuals to seek various livelihood choices and achieve their livelihood goals (Kedir, 2015). Physical Capital describes the primary infrastructural facilities (like transport system, water supply, health care and telecommunications) and production instruments (like farm machinery and household goods) required to sustain livelihoods (Makhetha, 2010). Social Capital describes relationships of trust that enhance cooperation, lower transaction costs, and may serve as the foundation for unstructured safety nets among the impoverished (Altasseb, 2021).
Impacts of sustainability and resilience research on risk governance, management and education
Published in Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure, 2021
Linda Nielsen, Michael H. Faber
The concept of natural capital emerged in the 1980s from the field of ecological economics as a first attempt to broaden the notion of capital, which in traditional economics refers exclusively to money, tools and machinery used in the production of goods and services, to now also include energy, nonrenewable resources, ecosystem services, and the life-supporting biophysical ecosystems that generate these (Costanza & Daly, 1992; Ekins et al., 2003; Jansson et al., 1994; Kareiva et al., 2011). The traditional model of production of an economy based on the three input factors land, labor and capital, is revised in Folke et al. (2016) so that these factors correspond to natural capital, human/social/cultural capital and human-made capital. The trio human/social/cultural capital is an extension of the traditional labor and human capital and is to be understood as those human institutions involved in the value setting and governance of human actions (Baland & Platteau, 1996; Berkes & Folke, 1992; Dasgupta & Serageldin, 1999; Folke et al., 2016; Pretty & Ward, 2001; Putnam, 2002). Human-made capital is an extension of the traditional notion of capital and includes, e.g., technology and capital markets (Costanza & Daly, 1992; Folke et al., 2016). Human-made capital is also referred to as manufactured capital by some authors (e.g., Dasgupta 2014).
Sustainable development and mega infrastructure: an overview of the issues
Published in Journal of Mega Infrastructure & Sustainable Development, 2019
The Cornucopian Type:8 This is where the natural world consists of resources for human use. The environment is just another form of capital: natural capital. Human-made capital may be substituted for natural capital if it is feasible and good for us. Our future lies in human improvement by means of human ingenuity. Where substitutability is not possible, the advancement of technological innovation will allow ‘critical natural capital’ to be sustained: ‘natural capital whose presence and integrity is pre-conditional for survival’ (Dobson, 1998, p. 43). The only valid ethical purpose is individual human welfare in aggregate. The first object of concern is the present generation of human needs and desires. In Dobson’s view this concept is not one of ‘environmental sustainability’, nor, in our view, one of ‘sustainable development’.