Natural capital in the context of "Pollination"

The ecological footprint measures human demand on natural capital, i.e. the quantity of nature it takes to support people and their economies. It tracks human demand on nature through an ecological accounting system. The accounts contrast the biologically productive area people use to satisfy their consumption to the biologically productive area available within a region, nation, or the world (biocapacity). Biocapacity is the productive area that can regenerate what people demand from nature. Therefore, the metric is a measure of human impact on the environment. As Ecological Footprint accounts measure to what extent human activities operate within the means of our planet, they are a central metric for sustainability.

The metric is promoted by the Global Footprint Network which has developed standards to make results comparable. FoDaFo, supported by Global Footprint Network and York University are now providing the national assessments of Footprints and biocapacity.

A green economy is an economy that aims at reducing environmental risks and ecological scarcities, and that aims for sustainable development without degrading the environment. It is closely related with ecological economics, but has a more politically applied focus. The 2011 UNEP Green Economy Report argues "that to be green, an economy must not only be efficient, but also fair. Fairness implies recognizing global and country level equity dimensions, particularly in assuring a Just Transition to an economy that is low-carbon, resource efficient, and socially inclusive."

A feature distinguishing it from prior economic regimes is the direct valuation of natural capital and ecological services as having economic value (see The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity and Bank of Natural Capital) and a full cost accounting regime in which costs externalized onto society via ecosystems are reliably traced back to, and accounted for as liabilities of, the entity that does the harm or neglects an asset.

Sustainable yield is the amount of a resource that humans can harvest without over-harvesting or damaging a potentially renewable resource.

In more formal terms, the sustainable yield of natural capital is the ecological yield that can be extracted without reducing the base of capital itself, i.e. the surplus required to maintain ecosystem services at the same or increasing level over time. The term only refers to resources that are renewable in nature as extracting non-renewable resources will always diminish the natural capital. The sustainable yield of a given resource will generally vary over time with the ecosystem's needs to maintain itself. For instance, a forest that has suffered from a natural disaster will require more of its own ecological yield to sustain itself and re-establish a mature forest. This results in a decrease of the forest's sustainable yield. The definition of sustainable yield has changed throughout history and the term itself has been described as anthropocentric due to limitations in applying ecological complexity. The term sustainable yield is most commonly used in forestry, fisheries, and groundwater applications.

Ecological economics, bioeconomics, ecolonomy, eco-economics, or ecol-econ is both a transdisciplinary and an interdisciplinary field of academic research addressing the interdependence and coevolution of human economies and natural ecosystems, both intertemporally and spatially. By treating the economy as a subsystem of Earth's larger ecosystem, and by emphasizing the preservation of natural capital, the field of ecological economics is differentiated from environmental economics, which is the mainstream economic analysis of the environment. One survey of German economists found that ecological and environmental economics are different schools of economic thought, with ecological economists emphasizing strong sustainability and rejecting the proposition that physical (human-made) capital can substitute for natural capital (see the section on weak versus strong sustainability below).

Ecological economics was founded in the 1980s as a modern discipline on the works of and interactions between various European and American academics (see the section on History and development below). The related field of green economics is in general a more politically applied form of the subject.

The Bank of Natural Capital is an educational initiative associated with The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) to communicate natural capital investment and value theory related to what are sometimes called "economic intangibles" to the global public, in particular the direct economic and financial value of ecosystem services to man.

It encapsulates the idea that the natural world is defined as capital and something to profit on through a capitalist society, saying 'we pay for things we find valuable'. The capitalist construction of nature as something with a value will lead to, as already apparent its over-abstraction and system collapse.

True Cost Accounting (TCA) is an accounting approach that measures and values the hidden impacts of economic activities on the environment, society and health. TCA is also referred to as full cost accounting (FCA) or “multiple capital accounting (MCA)”. The approach moves beyond purely economic thinking with the aim of improving decision-making in commercial organizations and in public policy. It includes accounting for natural capital, human capital, social capital and produced capital.

The True Cost Accounting approach can be applied to every sector of the economy. It aims to reveal the impacts of economic activities on society as a whole, in addition to the private costs directly incurred by producers and consumers. These can be environmental, health or social impacts that are not reflected in the market prices of products and services, i.e. not included in the operational profit and loss accounts, and so are regarded as hidden. True Cost Accounting is of particular relevance for agrifood systems (food and non-food agricultural products), where hidden costs can be substantial. Indeed, much of the development of TCA has historically been in the context of food.