A price for everything?’
The ‘natural capital controversy’
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12936993 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Rupert Read (corresponding author), Molly Scott Cato (0000-0002-8659-3323) |
| Year | 2014 |
| Volume | 5 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 153-167 |
| Publication date | 2014-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Human Rights and the Environment (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1759-7188 • E-ISSN: 1759-7196 |
| Publisher | Edward Elgar Publishing (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.4337/jhre.2014.03.03 |
| OpenAlex | W2168241185 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 7 |
‘Sustainability’ is a contested concept. This contestability – and its basis in deep, oppositional convictions – means that the argument between those who would substitute financial for natural capital and those who believe that such substitution is impossible and/or dangerous is unlikely to be resolved. Some of those in the latter group who have previously argued for a strong view of sustainability (one that privileges nature or perhaps ‘natural capital’ as primary and sacrosanct) appear to have despaired of their ability to influence policy and have capitulated to capitalist hegemony – in semantic terms, at least – by adopting its language, that is to say, the language of ‘money’. Our purpose in this paper is to argue that this is a logically inconsistent position and that acceptance of the monetary valuation of nature necessarily entails acceptance of its commodification – a commodification inimical to sustainability in the deep sense. We further suggest that this debate might be called the ‘natural capital controversy’. Thus we explicitly draw a parallel between this debate and the so-called ‘capital controversy’ that took place in some of the leading economics journals in the 1950s to 1970s
Argument (complex analysis · Capital (architecture · Commodification · Economics · Environmental ethics · Hegemony · Law and economics · Market economy · Natural capital · Neoclassical economics · Political science · Positive economics · Sociology · Sustainability · Valuation (finance · Climate Change and Geoengineering · Climate Change Policy and Economics · History · Law · Philosophy · Sustainable Development and Environmental Policy · Finance
An ethnographic examination of the experience of ecotherapy as an intervention for mental health in South and West Wales
The idea(s) of 'valuing nature
The values of trees and woodland
Identifying and resisting the technological drift
Natural capital approaches to decision-making for collaborative landscape governance
The Value of Water
On 'Natural Capital', 'Fairy Tales' and Ideology
| Unique citing works | 7 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,7 |
| Citation span | 2016 - 2025 (10) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |