between economics and ecology_ some historical and

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BETWEEN ECONOMICS AND ECOLOGY: SOME HISTORICAL AND

PHILOSOPHICAL CONSIDERATIONS FOR MODELERS OF NATURAL

CAPITAL

JAY FOSTER Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto, Toronto,

Ontario, Canada

(e-mail: [email protected])

Abstract. Natural capital models attempt to remediate the relationship between economics and

ecology either by conjoining models and theories from each discipline or by finding a type of phe-

nomena that can be meaningfully measured by both fields. The development of a widely accepted

model that integrates economics and ecology has eluded researchers since the early 1970s. This paperoffers an historical and philosophical perspective on some of the conceptual problems or obstacles

that hinder the development of natural capital models. In particular, the disciplinary assumptions

of economic science and ecological science are examined and it is argued that these assumptions

are antithetical. Hence, the development of an effective and accepted natural capital model will

require that economics and ecology reconsider their self-conceptions as sciences. For the purposes

of theoretical research and practical policy, the paper cautions against confusing the issue of whether

or not economic models accord with ecological models with the issue of whether or not economic

activities accord with ecological realities.

Keywords: ecology, economics, history, human science, natural capital, natural science, philosophy

1. Introduction: Three Questions

In general, natural capital models attempt to remediate the relationship between

economics and ecology either by conjoining models and theories from each dis-

cipline or by finding a type of phenomena that can be meaningfully measured by

both fields. If the present objective is to contribute to the construction of a natural

capital model, then before undertaking this project in any great detail, perhaps

three questions should be considered. First, what is natural capital? Second, how is

natural capital to be modeled or represented? Third, what should a natural capital

model be able to accomplish? Answers to the first question help clarify the scope or

This paper is the product of a presentation given at the Joint World Bank – University of Toronto

Natural Capital Workshop held at the University of Toronto on 23 April 1999. Thanks to RogerHansell, Kirk Hamilton and Adam Fenech for co-ordinating a rewarding day of discussion. Thanks

to the reviewers for their thoughtful comments and also to Bryan Boddy, Bob Foster and Leonore

Foster. Thanks for help from Niko Fleming, Daryn Lehoux and Gordon McOuot. Communication

may be addressed to Jay Foster, University of Toronto, Old Victoria College, 91 Charles St. W.,

Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Environmental Monitoring and Assessment 86: 63–74, 2003.

© 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.


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64 J. FOSTER

domain of the idea of natural capital, while answers to the second question consider

how natural capital is to be measured or tracked. Answers to the third question help

provide a means of evaluating the relative effectiveness of proposed natural capital

models.

Of course, these may be considered fairly simple questions, which in a general

form should be answered in any research proposal in order to clarify the scope and

content of the research. However, the apparent simplicity of these questions belies

their complexity at two levels. First, these three questions are intimately related.

It would seem difficult if not impossible to begin developing a model of natural

capital without some clear understanding of what natural capital is and the purposes

for which natural capital is being modeled. Second, answers to any one question

tend to limit potential answers to the other questions. That is, the application of

a particular set of modeling techniques or methods will have implications for the

definition of natural capital as well as its potential usefulness. Similarly, if natural

capital models are to be used in particular contexts, then this will limit and con-

strict the modeling techniques available and this in turn will affect the definition.Answers to basic or simple questions posed at the beginning of research carry long

term repercussions for both the structure of research and the end results or products

of research. In the long run, it seems likely that there will be several interpretations

of the idea of natural capital which will accord with several different models of

natural capital each of which may be effective in a different context. What will

ultimately distinguish different approaches to understanding natural capital is not

necessarily different research findings, but different answers to the basic questions

established at the outset of research.

The objective of this paper is not to advocate particular answers to any of these

basic questions, for each question probably has many reasonable and cogent an-

swers. Nor will this paper advocate any single definition of natural capital or anysingle approach to modeling natural capital, for what constitutes a good definition

and model is as intimated very much dependent on research objectives. The inten-

tion of this paper is to help contribute to the formation of natural capital models by

clarifying some of the conceptual difficulties that obstruct the formation of such a

model. The first part of the paper will offer a brief survey of some of the historical

sympathies and antipathies between ecological science and economic science and

explore the implications of these for the idea of natural capital. The second part of

the paper will inspect some of the basic assumptions and definitions that underwrite

economics and ecology in order to assess exactly what a natural capital model will

need to undertake in order to successfully mediate between ecological science and

economic science. On these foundations, the conclusion will assess what might

and might not be reasonably expected from natural capital models. The hope of the paper is that a clearer understanding of the relationship between nature and

capital, and between economic science and ecological science, will contribute to

the development of more robust and more clearly defined models.


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BETWEEN ECONOMICS AND ECOLOGY 65

2. From the Economy of Nature to Natural Capital

On the face of things, human economic activity would seem to be the enemy of

environmental well-being. Almost all economic activities need natural resources.The acquisition of natural resources disturbs the existing environment, and human

disturbances in the environment sometimes precipitate environmental problems.

In addition, there is the larger question of the extent to which the rate at which

humans use natural resources exceeds the ability of the natural environment to

produce or maintain these resources. Further, economic science and ecological sci-

ence seem to be disciplines that are incommensurable; they are disciplines with no

common measure. Economists generally like to measure costs and benefits in terms

of utility; they measure the ‘marginal propensity’ of individuals to do some things

but not others, and often but reluctantly, they use money to measure economic

variables. Ecology relies on a variety of factors and measures from biomass to

population size and even borrowed thermodynamic concepts to model and repres-

ent various aspects of ecological systems. Even in terms of the normative language

that accompanies each discipline, economics and ecology would seem to be deeply

divided. Economics tends to regard pollution and resource degradation as undesir-

able but inevitable side-effects of production, whereas an ecology typically regards

these things as disruptive and potentially dangerous factors being introduced into a

complex system of little understood natural relationships.

Historically, ecology and economics have a less acrimonious relationship, which

to some degree, is reflected in their common etymology. The words ‘ecology’ and

‘economics’ are both derived from the Greek word oikos meaning ‘household’. A

modern reader would probably understand a household as consisting of the ‘hold-

ings’ of a house or family, but in its original sense, the word oikos also connotes

the administration or stewardship of wealth. The term ‘œconomy’ was used byThomas Hobbes in the late seventeenth century to describe the administration of

common wealth. By the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century, Adam

Smith, Thomas Malthus, David Ricardo and others were describing their study

of the production and distribution of social wealth as ‘political economy’. In the

late nineteenth century the name political economy gave way to ‘economics’. The

word ‘œcology’ emerged much later than the word ‘œconomy’ in the work of the

nineteenth-century German natural philosopher Ernst Haeckel. In 1879, Haeckel

wrote: ‘By œcology we mean the body of knowledge concerning the œconomy

of nature – the investigation of the total relations of the animal both to its in-

organic and its organic environment’.1 The modern Oxford English Dictionary

echoes Haeckel by defining ecology as: ‘The science of the economy of animals

and plants; that branch of biology which deals with the relations of living organisms

to their surroundings, their habits and modes of life, etc’.

Just as nineteenth-century economics emerged from eighteenth-century polit-

ical economy, nineteenth-century ecology emerged from an eighteenth-century idea,

namely, ‘the economy of nature’. In 1749, the Swedish naturalist Carl von Linné,


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66 J. FOSTER

popularly known as Linnaeus, published The Œconomy of Nature. Like many of

his contemporaries, Linnaeus believed that the specific capabilities of particular

species and the balance between different species together comprised a fixed and

ordered natural economy. At the center of the economy was a continuous cycle

of water flowing upward from the earth through the ‘exhalations’ of rivers and

oceans and returning to the earth as rain and snow. Plant and animal species were

organized so that every species had a fixed place, number and function within

the natural order. In exchange for performing its function satisfactorily, nature

provided a species with the necessaries of life. Man was the only species that could

attempt to violate the order of nature, because unlike plants and ‘brutes’, mankind

possessed free will. Linnaeus’ On the Polity of Nature published in 1760 in part

argued that nature compelled men to wage wars in order to reduce their population

and restore the balance of the ordained order.2 This idea would later be subsumed

into Thomas Malthus’ well known ‘population principle’ which would hold that

the rate of potential population increase exceeded that of food production.

In the 1798 first edition of his Essay on the Principle of Population, Malthus ex-pressed the population principle as a contrast between the geometric rate at which

population was capable of increasing and the arithmetic rate at which subsistence

could be expanded. The contrast between an arithmetic rate of subsistence growth

and a geometric rate of population growth would influence subsequent economic

and biological science respectively. The identification of an arithmetic rate of sub-

sistence growth would be used by later political economists, like David Ricardo

and John Stuart Mill, to contribute to the development of the classical theory of

rent and the law of diminishing returns.3 In his Autobiography, Charles Darwin

acknowledged that a re-reading of Malthus’ Essay in 1838 was formative in the

development of the Origin of the Species. Malthus’ identification of the pressures or

checks resulting from a constant competition for food and space brought about bygeometric population growth was an essential component in Darwin’s formation of

the process of natural selection.4 Even in the twentieth century, when economic and

biological sciences have largely disentangled themselves, Malthus’ ideas continue

to directly influence both disciplines in the guise of neo-Malthusianism.

Although the idea that human activities are potentially at odds with the order

of nature is not new, in the second half of the twentieth century, this idea has been

expanded to suggest that national and global economic activities are at odds with

global ecological realities. This reformulation of an old idea is itself as least as old

as Rachael Carson’s work the Silent Spring. In that work published in 1962, Carson

warned that the widespread use of DDT and other long lasting herbicides and pesti-

cides was causing the wholesale destruction of wildlife and also clearly endangered

human life. As well as identifying a burgeoning environmental problem, Carson’swork placed environmental problems in general within the political and economic

context of the post-Second World War and post-Bretton Woods world.5 The sa-

lient political features of the DDT problem were that it was a global issue that

defied national borders and that the initial cause of the problem was an excessive


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emphasis on limiting economic expenses. Since 1962, whenever environmental

concerns have figured in the global political agenda the same basic message has

been repeated and accompanied with increasingly dire warnings – from Dennis

Meadows et al.’s Limits to Growth published in 1972, to the World Commission

on Environment and Development report Our Common Future published in 1987,

and most recently, Agenda 21 adopted at the UN Conference on Environment and

Development in 1992. Since the late 1980s, the term ‘sustainable development’

has become the popular leitmotif of a new international political environmental

awareness which acknowledges that there are strong inter-relationships between

economic and ecological well-being. Hence, sustainable development, as defined

in Our Common Future, not only requires that ‘those who are more affluent adopt

life-styles within the planet’s ecological means’, but also that ‘a world in which

poverty is endemic will always be prone to ecological and other catastrophes’. 6

Of course, saying that human economic activity is at odds with environmental

well-being is different than saying that economic science is at odds with environ-

mental well-being or that economic science is at odds with ecological science.The idea of sustainable development contends that present economic practices

and activities can be reformed so that they will better reflect environmental or

ecological realities. As such, sustainable development implicitly holds that past

economic activities have been environmentally deleterious and explicitly holds that

economic activities can be reformed so that they will not be similarly destructive in

the future. Unlike the idea of sustainable development, the idea of natural capital by

itself makes no claims about the extent to which economic practices and ecological

needs may be reconciled, but only proposes to provide a measure or indicator of

the effects of economic activity on the environment. A natural capital model may

serve as the basis for a blue print or strategy for sustainable development, but by no

means could it guarantee or ensure that economic activities are sustainable. Ratherit attempts to find some common ground or alignment between economic science

and ecological science, so that economic effects may be evaluated in ecological

terms and that ecological effects may be evaluated in economic terms. At the end

of the day, the question of whether or not economic activities are in accord with

ecological realities is very different than the question of whether or not economic

models are in accord with ecological models.

Even though ecology and economics shared an early history, they are sciences

that have grown apart, and finding a measure or indicator that might meaningfully

span both disciplines has eluded researchers since the early 1970s. The ‘Mead-

ows Model’, on which Limits to Growth was based, extrapolated existing trends

in population growth, consumption of natural resources, food production, and in-

dustrial pollution, and it predicted that the modern world would shortly encountersevere Malthusian checks unless international development policies were radically

revised. The ‘Meadows Model’ was the object of sharp criticism, notably by W.

Beckerman, for its inclusion of economic indicators as deterministic variables and

for its inclusion of assumptions about human ‘delays’ in response to identified


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68 J. FOSTER

problems. In the early 1970s, Howard Odum began offering an ‘energy circuit

model’ for understanding relationships between the social and the ecological and

proposed an energy unit as a common measure. Later efforts by Odum, and else-

where B. Hannon, R. Costanza and R. A. Herendeen, to refine the original work has

been met with interest, but without widespread adoption. Through the 1980s and

1990s, these early efforts to develop an integrated model have been continued by

many others, among them Robert Constanza, Herman E. Daly, William Nordhaus

and David Pearce. But as yet there exists no model or group of models that serve

to integrate the concerns of economics with the concerns of ecology. The absence

of any significant consensus after some three decades of time, effort and expertise

leads to the question: what is it about economic science and ecological science that

makes them so difficult to integrate?

3. Looking a Gift Horse in the Mouth

Economists call the various pre-requisites for the production of a commodity or ser-

vice the ‘factors of production’. An introductory economics textbook often given

to university undergraduates gives the following general taxonomy of the factors of

production: ‘all products can be accounted for by the services of only three kinds

of inputs, which are often called the basic factors of production. All the gifts of

nature, such as land and raw materials, the economists call land. All physical and

mental efforts provided by people are called labour services. All machines and

other production equipment are grouped in a category called capital, defined as

man-made aids to further production’.7 The same textbook groups ‘land, forests

and minerals’ among the free gifts of nature.8 Elsewhere, the textbook clarifies

what it means for something to be natural and free by stating: ‘When a good isnaturally free, the amount supplied by nature is so plentiful that every household

can consume it ... without exhausting the available supply’.9 The textbook also

provides an economic definition of ‘free’, namely, that ‘for which no price needs

to be paid’.10

A human resource simply is the mental and physical labour of a person, while

capital, such as tools and machinery, aids production but required human labour

to create it in the first place. Most economists regard natural resources as being

different from human resources and capital, because no human effort was expen-

ded in the development of natural resources. In economic terms, coal, lumber,

water and other natural resources when plentiful only command a price insofar

as human effort, like digging, felling and bottling, is expended in changing the

natural resource into a marketable commodity. The emphasis on human interests

and human efforts in mainstream economics may seem narrow or unpardonably

anthropocentric. However, economic science is primarily concerned with the effi-

cient allocation of scarce resources to satisfy apparently unlimited human wants,

and because of this, rightly or wrongly, its focus is on humans and things useful


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to humans. As a consequence of this focus, economics is a human science not a

natural science.

To an ecologist, environmentalist or naturalist, the economic view of the natural

world may be unrealistic or even surrealistic. From these perspectives, it makes no

sense to describe the endowments of nature as being free, and very little sense to

describe a component of nature as being a resource. Ecology is a natural science

which in general is concerned with the interactions of organisms with their physical

environment and with each other.11 Many natural entities, like flora, fauna, soil,

water and air, may be regarded as resources from the perspective of the human

economy, but they are not resources from the perspective of the ecological systems

of which they are part. An ecologist may recognise that many components of the

natural world are economically useful and be concerned with the effects of human

economic activity on ecological systems, because after all, humans are organisms

and economics is one of the ways in which humans describe their relationship with

their physical environment. While the ecologist may be interested in the implic-

ations of human economic activity, the description of the productive activities of humans is not within the immediate purview of the natural science of ecology.

Of course, economists are not simply environmental brutes, for they also like

clean rivers, healthy forests and a benign climate for the present and for the future,

even though the growth based economy advocated by mainstream Keynsian and

neo-classical economists is often criticised as being fundamentally irreconcilable

with a stable ecology. All economists recognise that the allocation or use of the

factors of production to benefit some individuals can often incur unintended costs

to other individuals. This recognition is built into economics by the identification

of two types of costs: private cost which assesses costs incurred from the perspect-

ive of private individuals and social cost which assesses costs incurred from the

perspective of the whole society. Discrepancies between private costs and socialcosts are recognised as producing ill effects, notably, pollution, the degradation of

common-property resources like forests and oceans, and the neglect of the future

consequences of present actions. Unfortunately, economists commonly describe

these discrepancies with the unintentionally pejorative term ‘externalities’, or less

commonly and somewhat less pejoratively ‘third-party effects’. Again, this has

much to do with the economic way of seeing. Third-party effects are described

as externalities, not to diminish their significance, but because they are the social

side-effects external to the largely private process of allocating resources. Indeed,

there are beneficial externalities as well as harmful externalities, but there tend to

be fewer of these because the person producing a beneficial externality bears all of

the costs while others reap a portion of the benefits.


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4. Not Looking a Gift Horse in the Mouth

According to textbooks on economics, capital is fundamentally different than nat-

ural resources, even though they are both required for the production of commod-ities and they are both to a greater or lesser degree consumed in the course of

production. Two features of capital make it special: first, making capital tends to

require considerable human effort which tends to make it expensive to produce;

and second, increasing the amount of capital available usually entails a sacrifice at

the present time for a gain at a future time. Because of the special status of capital,

it is generally believed that the existing stock of capital should be conserved by

prudent allocation and the minimisation of depreciation, so that there will be the

greatest possible return from the stock of capital. The introduction of the concept

of natural capital would immediately move land, forests, minerals and other natural

entities from the domain of resources to the domain of capital. As a consequence

of this shift, natural entities would cease to be free gifts which have no cost or

price for their use and start being capital which carries a cost or price for its use.Like other forms of capital, natural capital would need to be preserved by prudent

allocation and the minimisation of depreciation, so that there would be the greatest

possible return from the stock of capital. From the perspective of environmental

conservation, the introduction of the concept of natural capital would seem to have

immediate beneficial effects, just as the idea of capital has beneficial effects in

terms of conserving productive human labour. However, the successful introduc-

tion of the concept would involve a fundamental restructuring of the outlook of

both economic science and ecological science.

For economic science, the adoption of the natural capital concept requires a

shift in the intellectual structure of the discipline at two levels. First and obviously,

a necessary or required concomitant of endorsing the idea of natural capital is thateconomic science would need to redefine its understanding of the basic factors of

production, so that natural resources cease to be resources and become capital. In

the long term, production requires a stock of natural capital as well as human labour

and conventional capital. From a natural capital perspective, there are no free gifts

of nature, but only an endowment of natural capital which, like more conventional

forms of capital, must be conserved and protected from depreciation in order to

guarantee long term productivity. Second and perhaps more fundamentally, eco-

nomic science must re-evaluate its understanding of itself as a scientific enterprise.

Hitherto, economics has been the study of human production and as such has been

a human science. This focus on the interests of humans and human activities has

meant that the natural world has a secondary or subsidiary role in economic sci-

ence. If natural capital were to supplant the concept of a natural resource, then thiswould represent a fundamental shift in the status of the natural world in economic

science, and with it would shift the status of economic science as a human science.

Economics would no longer exclusively consider human productive activities, for

the effects of those activities on the natural or non-human world would be an

explicit economic concern.


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The successful introduction of a concept of natural capital will also require a

re-tooling of ecological science. Ecology is a natural science not a human science,

and as a natural science, ecology attempts to wrestle with the natural world on its

own terms. Of course, all scientific activity is ultimately a human activity and to

some extent is marked by human perspectives and scales, but the natural sciences

at least attempt to leave behind the trappings and entrapments of a human centered

world. For the idea of natural capital to be successful, ecology may have to abandon

this aspiration of natural science. There is no capital in the natural world and the

very idea of natural capital, whatever its measure, will reflect human interests in the

natural world. Ecology would no longer exclusively consider the inter-relationships

between organisms and the physical environment, for the way in which the human

organism appropriates and uses other organisms and the physical environment

would be an explicit ecological concern. Inasmuch as the ‘natural’ component

of natural capital requires economics to become a natural science, the ‘capital’

part of natural capital requires ecology to become a human or social science. In

other words, the natural capital concept requires ecology and economics to re-consider their self-conceptions as sciences because it erases or very much blurs the

distinction between the human world and the natural world.12

5. Summary and Conclusion: When Driven to Abstraction

From the vantage point of the late twentieth century, that economics and ecology

have a common early history might be taken as a matter of irony rather than

of interest. In the period following the Second World War, there was increasing

awareness that human economic practices and activities do not reflect environ-mental or ecological realities. In 1987, the World Commission on Environment

and Development report Our Common Future popularized the idea of sustainable

development as the expression of a commitment to a better balance between the

need for economic growth or development and the need for a stable and benign

environment. Although the ecological repercussions of economic activity had been

recognized for some time, from a policy perspective, there was no means of eval-

uating and measuring the ecological effects of economic activities as well as the

economic effects of ecological activities. In the 1970s, several different models and

measures were proposed which included ecological and environmental factors, but

none received wide acceptance. More recent attempts to develop a so-called natural

capital model in order to integrate the divergent concerns of economic science and

ecological science have been promising, but again no particular approach has met

with wide support. That the development of a natural capital model is proving

difficult is perhaps not surprising given that the disciplinary assumptions of modern

economic and ecological sciences are antithetical, even though they may share a

common past.


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At political and policy levels, recurring interest in natural capital and other

similar ideas is probably a consequence of problems inherent in the process of

building political consensus on environmental issues as well as the difficulties

inherent in evaluating the effectiveness of existing environmental programs. Not

unsurprisingly, there are enormous difficulties in creating consensus among polit-

ical participants with different interests and aspirations. And so, in the political

arena, there is little agreement about the extent of environmental problems, the

ecologically most sound policies for ameliorating environmental degradation, and

the most effective and efficient means of implementing these policies. A natural

capital model, mandated by both economic science and ecological science, could

be a powerful force assisting the creation of political consensus so that corrective

policy could be implemented. In every respect, an accepted and robust natural cap-

ital model would seem to be a panacea for the problems of modern environmental

politics.

From this perspective, the principal barrier to political agreement and action

would appear to be the lack of an agreed upon common measure or indicator. Auseful natural capital model would provide a measure or indicator which could

describe or give a ‘snap shot’ of the present state of affairs in both the economy

and ecology. A refined version of this model might be able to provide a framework

for monitoring the effectiveness of policy initiatives, or might provide a means of

anticipating or evaluating the consequences of proposed policies. However useful

this model, it would be a mistake to believe that even the best model could promise

that future economic activities will be ecologically sustainable. A natural capital

model only makes economic models accord with ecological models – it makes

descriptions of economic activity line up with descriptions of natural relationships.

The issue of whether or not economic models are in accord with ecological models

is very different than the issue of whether or not economic activities are in accordwith ecological realities. Making economic activities accord with ecological real-

ities will probably be the work of politicians and policy makers rather than model

builders. Insofar as a natural capital model is to be useful rather than merely inter-

esting, the primary objective of the model is to provide a groundwork of scientific

consensus between economics and ecology so that consensus about political and

policy actions and objectives might follow.

On these terms, a natural capital model would be a scientifically mandated

means of establishing which environmental issues need to be addressed and a

means of evaluating how adequately they are addressed. But the further belief that

a natural capital model might be able to compel political consensus is based on a

confusion. Scientific models describe the way the world ‘is’ while political agendas

and policy are descriptions of the way the world ‘ought to be’. In logic, the inabilityto derive claims about what ought or should be the case directly from statements

about what is the case is often called the ‘is-ought dichotomy’. One implication of

the dichotomy is that scientific models which describe states of affairs, and might

even predict future states of affairs, are not by themselves imperatives for action. In


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other words, it is not possible to leverage prescriptions for action off descriptions of

states of affairs, because there is no necessary or required connection between the

two different kinds of claims or statements. This is not to deny that people often act

on the basis of scientific models and evidence, but they do this only when a belief

about interests, needs, wants or desires has been added to the scientific description.

In the case of a natural capital model, an ideal model might encapsulate much of

the descriptive content of ecology and economics and provide a robust measure of

the present state of the ecology and the economy. But, from that description alone

no political or policy action necessarily follows.

This may seem to pose no problem because a natural capital model is intended

to provide an objective or value-neutral measure or indicator of economic and en-

vironmental well-being. The apparent objectivity or value-neutrality of the model

is what would make it persuasive in a world of political disagreement. But, this is a

problem because a natural capital model will only compel action if there is already

agreement that economic activities are at odds with ecological realities, because

a pure description by itself will not and cannot compel action. Thus, deployingnatural capital models at the political and policy level shall require consensus

that environmental problems are beyond the reach of conventional economic and

ecological sciences. Paradoxically, it is this very consensus that the idea of natural

capital is supposed to create in the first place. Perhaps then, the problems that

continue to beset the formation a practical natural capital model may have less to

do with the scientific issues inherent in developing the model and more to do with

the problems of creating a moral and political consensus about the nature and extent

of environmental problems. In short, scientific expertise cannot act as a surrogate

for political will and moral commitment.

Notes

1 Haeckel quoted in Brewer, 1979: 1.2 Bramwell, 1989: 46; Spary, 1996: 178; Worster, 1992: 31−39.3 Hollander, 1989.4 Barlow, 1958: 120.5 The signing of the Bretton Woods Agreement on 27 July 1944 implicitly acknowledged that the

Great Depression and the Second World War marked the emergence of political and economic prob-

lems that could not be effectively addressed by individual nation states and required the intervention

of new international economic and political organizations. The Bretton Woods agreement led to the

formation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to augment the activities of the International

Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank).6 World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987: 8−9.

7 Lipsey et al., 1982: 197.8 Lipsey et al., 1982: 6.9 Lipsey et al., 1982: 162. With apologies to readers who are economists for not including a discus-

sion of utility.10 Lipsey et al., 1982: 162.11 Curtis, 1983: 951.


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74 J. FOSTER

12 This may not be a new or unique problem. The French philosopher Bruno Latour has suggested

that from the inception of modern science, science practitioners promised a demarcation between the

natural world and the human world within the scientific enterprise. Latour suggests that science has

always failed to maintain this demarcation. See Latour, 1991.

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