Mainstreaming natural capital and ecosystem services into management decisions

Recent decades have witnesseddrastic changes in people's perception of environment protection and sustainable development. The sphere of understanding of this issuehas broadened to consciousness of advantages and losses from the natural capital, namely earth and water landscapes and theirbiodiversity. The importance of natural capital preservation for provision of steady flow of benefits from the ecosystem services is seenas vital for both wealthy and poor countries. Nowadays, the task is to integrate ecosystem services into practical solutions. This requiresjoint understanding of production of ecosystem services and of quantitative variety of benefits from them by various strata of society;understanding of the decision-making process by individuals, corporations, governments, the integration of scientific studiesaccompanied with institutional changes. The provision of rational nature management requires a mechanism of involvement of thenatural capital and ecosystem services into the process of making managerial decisions on the basis of the monitoring system of ecoeconomicvalue of the natural capital. Interfaced development of the two scientific fields is crucial for environmental managementeconomization. The first scientific field is perfection of economic assessment methods. The other one, equally representing an importantpart of the process, is the data collecting system on the use of natural capital reserves in all the spheres of natural management, includinghousekeeping. The UN statistics department proposed SEEA (System of Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting System)compatible with SNA (National Accounts System) in 1993. National Accounts classifies natural resources as tangible non-producedassets. Thus, EEAS is a product of new SNA, in which special attention is paid to the necessity of ecological sustainability assessmentof economic growth. According to the analysis of the federal state statistical monitoring system in the sphere of natural resourcesrecognition, the official statistics only contains information about the real volume of natural resources use and does not reflect theireconomic usage. The exploitation of natural resources in the household sector is not reflected in the statistical monitoring system.Improvement of the data collecting system in the sphere of natural resources exploitation is necessary for involvement of natural capitaland ecosystem services in the process of making business and power. This process should be implemented in two directions: firstly, it isaggregation of data on physical and monetary flows within the natural resources sector in the statistical monitoring system; secondly, itis involvement into the statistical monitoring system of household activity in the sphere of natural resources exploitation. Restructuringof the statistical monitoring system and creation of the economic value monitoring system of natural capital, including the householdsector, will make it possible to plan regional growth with regard to the population interests concerning creation of additional jobs andpoverty level reduction. Besides, this will enable to involve natural capital into the process of making managerial decisions of power andbusiness.

Keywords

Authors

References