|
|
"The nation's economic accounts provide objective, regular, and standardized information routinely relied on by public and private decision-makers. But they are incomplete. The United States and many other nations currently do not account for the natural capital--such as the wildlife, forests, grasslands, soils, and water bodies--on which all other economic activity rests. By creating formal natural capital accounts (NCA) and ecosystem goods and service (EGSA) accounts, governments and businesses could better understand the past, peer into the future, innovate, conserve, and plan for environmental shocks. They would standardize, regularly repeat, and aggregate diverse natural resource, environmental, and social...
|
Ecosystem services - the benefits that nature provides to society and the economy - are gaining increasing traction worldwide as governments and the private sector use them to monitor integrated environmental and economic trends. When they are well understood and managed, ecosystems can provide these long-term benefits to people - such as clean air and water, flood control, crop pollination, and recreational, cultural, and aesthetic benefits. Within the U.S. government, a memo issued by the White House Council on Environmental Quality in October 2015 charged agencies with incorporating these values in planning, investment, and regulatory processes. Natural capital accounting - a tool being used in dozens of countries...
|
|
