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Natural capital
Humans cannot survive without the goods and services provided by nature. Natural capital includes clean water, open space for recreation, soils for food production, insects for pollination of crops, an atmosphere that protects the earth from excessive warming. The natural capital/ecosystem-services strategy focuses on helping humans understand how everyday things they care deeply about (e.g., good tasting food, fall foliage, rural landscapes, places for hiking, birding) actually depend on functioning ecosystems. In our present society we do not make these connections—we do not understand that we often are drawing down on the principal that provides us with these everyday things.
Manomet’s Natural Capital Initiative is working to help businesses and human communities identify, measure, and manage natural capital so that it can be used sustainably. Examples of projects include:
- Working with dairy farmers to develop a farm sustainability scorecard so that farms can remain a vibrant part of the rural New England countryside.
- Working with small and large landowners to figure out how their forests can help fight climate change by “capturing” CO2, the major greenhouse gas, from the atmosphere and storing it as wood.
- Working with recreational user groups to develop a standardized approach to measuring recreation’s impacts on the environments they enjoy.
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