Natural capital - both nonrenewable resources and the renewable resources that make up ecosystems - is potentially endangered by the human process of adapting and modifying the world around us.
The results of a workshop held following the second biannual conference of the International Society for Ecological Economics, Investing in Natural Capital emphasizes the essential connections between natural ecosystems and human socioeconomic systems, and the importance of ensuring that both remain resilient. Specific chapters deal with methodology, case studies, and policy questions and offer a thorough exploration of this provocative and important transdisciplinary alternative to conventional solutions to environmental problems.
The International Society for Ecological Economics (ISEE) is a not-for-profit organization concerned with integrating the study and management of nature's household (ecology) with humanity's household (economy). Ecological economics acknowledges that, in the end, a healthy economy can only exist in symbiosis with a healthy ecology.
The late AnnMari Jansson was Professor in the Department of Systems Ecology at the University of Stockholm, Sweden.
Monica Hammer works in the Department of Systems Ecology at the University of Stockholm, Sweden.
Carl Folke works at the Beijer International Institute of Ecological Economics.
Robert Costanza is Director of the Institute for Ecological Economics at the University of Maryland, based in Solomons, Maryland, and coauthor ofEcosystem Health (Island Press, 1992).