ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how the “natural capital” metaphor has been elaborated in societal conflicts around exploiting nature. To identify and protect “natural capital assets”, accounting methods have been formalized by business organizations in cooperation with non-governmental conservation organizations (NGCOs). In particular, their joint Natural Capital Protocol provides “ ‘a comprehensive guide to measuring and valuing natural capital in business decision-making” ’. As a key criticism from other NGOs, nature-pricing obscures the social labour essential to maintain the natural resource base, in turn facilitating ‘ “the commodification of nature” ’. However, natural capital accounting (NCA) creates no new exchange value. Rather, NCA evaluates how a business depends on ecosystem services, as a basis to identify biophysical, financial and reputational risks to business access. It reifies socio-natural processes as inherent properties of an asset, thus obscuring how the services’ maintenance depends on social labour. Through the asset metaphor, natural resources may be better protected from damage – but are also separated from their everyday community protectors and users. This facilitates the business aim of rent-seeking: stable, exclusive and/or privileged access to the conditions of production. NCA initiatives depoliticize the power relations around natural resources and their allocation, while also legitimizing company stewardship as a substitute for state responsibility and regulation.
