Bob Riley Jr. and I continue our series on the Seven Capitals with a look at the first core Capital – Natural.
Throughout this series, we will continue to focus on the possibilities ahead in a post-Covid Aspirational World!
Natural Capital refers to “the landscape, air, water, soil, and biodiversity of both plants and animals.”, as stated by Flora and Flora in 2008.
Discussed further in a Conservation.org article from 2016 titled What on Earth is ‘Natural Capital’?, written by Bruno Vander Velde.
“Imagine that nature is a trust fund, and humans are the beneficiaries. Humans live off the ‘interest’ that the fund provides – the air, water, raw materials, carbon storage and its ability to regulate climate and mitigate floods, and so on. If humans keep dipping into the capital – by clearing too much forest for example – we’re going to see diminishing returns from those dividends, to say nothing of their ability to continue to provide benefits over time.”
Our distinguished guests for this week’s conversation on Natural Capital are:
Pat Boddy, Former DNR acting director and retired Environmental Engineer for RDG Planning & Design
And
Matt Russell, Executive Director of Iowa Interfaith Power & Light and a 5th generation Iowa farmer.
We had a very robust and insightful discussion with these two veterans of environmental practice and policy. They each have a deep understanding of our vital and necessary connection to nature and all that it provides and they shared thoughtful ideas on how to move forward. A few of which are noted in the Something to Think About below.
As Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote . . .
“Away, away, from men and towns, To the wild wood and the downs, - -
To the silent wilderness, Where the soul need not repress its music.”
And as Wendell Berry so eloquently stated . . .
“The Earth is what we all have in common.”
Key Takeaways:
- We need to move from a lens of scarcity to one of abundance.
- We need to shift our focus from ‘how bad things are’ to one where we expand to bring in more people as part of the solution – a bottom up approach!
- Fundamental change to ‘business as usual’ will be disruptive but this shake up will be necessary to move forward with timely and innovative solutions.
- We need all the different players to create incremental change and real movement forward.
Thank you for listening to the discussions as we learn from each other.
We are truly grateful.