By David Bollier, David Bollier blog
Language is surely one of the greatest political weapons ever invented because it invisibly defines the world in narrow ways and can impair our capacity to see and think clearly. This is one of the takeaways I had after looking through Sian Sullivan’s new website, “The Natural Capital Myth and Other Stories,” which collects twelve years of her writing (2008 to present) on this theme.
By Brian Davey, Feasta
What is needed is an approach called commoning – the idea that we all share responsibility. We are all are entitled to share natural resources– but only so far as use is made at a sustainable scale.
By Sustainable Food Trust Staff, Sustainable Food Trust
At The Future of UK Farming conference this April, The Sustainable Food Trust’s Patrick Holden chaired a session on “Measuring and Valuing Sustainability”. The panel discussed how to transform the economic environment for sustainable food production by empowering farmers to deliver measurable public goods.
By Eric Holthaus, Grist
The declining health of trees globally is starting to have profound effects on Earth’s carbon cycle. The rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide has been picking up speed over the past few years, even though human CO2 emissions have flattened. The net effect: Climate change is starting to accelerate.
By Tegan Tallulah, The Climate Lemon
It’s safe to say that life would not be the same without trees. In fact, all human civilisation is dependent upon them. Not only as a source of valuable resources, but also for the ecological benefits they provide – called ecosystem services. We all know trees are awesome, but most people don’t quite understand all the important things they do.
By Gunnar Rundgren, Garden Earth
Farming is the most significant human management system of the planet; the future of humans on the planet largely rests upon how we manage our farmscapes. If we accept this then it has profound implications for agricultural policy for it means that ‘managing the planet’ is almost as an important task of the farming system as supplying food.
By Sian Sullivan, The Conversation
But what is “natural capital”? And why use it to refer to “nature”?
By Randall Coleman, Solutions Journal
Soil is a vital resource that the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates contributes about USD $16.5 trillion in ecosystem services annually.
By Laurie Mazur, Mongabay
If a tree falls in the forest, what does it cost?
By Camila Moreno,
Until recently terms like “carbon accounting,” “carbon footprint,” and “carbon offsetting” would have raised some quizzical eyebrows among the general public. Today, such carbon-based metrics are everywhere, but are they helpful or unhelpful in motivating the necessary action on climate change?
By Robert Blasiak, OurWorld
Can cultural aesthetics be meaningfully quantified? And if so, can an ecosystem gain/lose value when cultural values shift?
By Eric Zencey, The Daly News
“Are individuals entitled to wealth created by society . . . or should this wealth belong to society as a whole?”