1. What is a sustainable society? What is Natural Capital and what is its importance to sustainability? Sustainability and Natural Capital

2. What is sustainability?

3. "In every deliberation, we must consider the impact on the seventh generation... ‘What about the seventh generation? Where are you taking them? What will they have?’” from the Great Law of the Iroquois Confederacy

4. What is a sustainable society? A sustainable society is one which: can provide for and manage its population and economy now, while maintaining an environment that will be healthy for future generations.

5. A sustainable society must… provide all of its people with enough good food and shelter, clean water and air. Shanghai skyline

6. A sustainable society must… meet the needs of its people without destroying the earth’s Natural Capital. Ontario Greenbelt

7. Capital? Natural? Natural Capital?

8. Natural Capital is… the resources and ecological services provided by the earth that support and sustain the earth’s life and economies (from Environmental Science: Working with the Earth, G. Tyler Miller Jr., 2004)

9. Natural Capital Resources Resources are anything obtained from the environment to meet plant, animal and human needs. Primary natural capital resources are: air, water, soil, energy and minerals.

10. Resources: Perpetual and Renewable Perpetual: renewed continuously on a human scale; Example: solar energy

11. Resources: Perpetual and Renewable Renewable: can be replenished fairly quickly on a human scale; Examples: forests, fresh water, air, soil Christmas tree farm

12. Resources: Non-renewable Non-renewable: exist in essentially fixed quantities on the earth; Examples: fossil fuels, metals such as iron and copper Open pit mine, Australia

13. Natural Capital Services Ecological services are processes by which the environment produces services; Ecological services affect the quality of our land, water, air, food and earth; Ecological services are also called natural capital services.

14. Ecological services include: Nutrient recycling Climate control Pollution control Waste treatment Biodiversity Pest and disease control Population control Wetland at the Brickworks

15. Example: water purification Catskill Watershed provides New York City with the ecosystem service of water purification. Natural processes (soil filtration of chemicals, nutrient recycling by soil microorganisms) improve water quality to government standards.

16. Example: water purification Watershed restoration and restrictions on sewage and pesticide input into the watershed cost an estimated $1-1.5 billion. Without this investment in natural capital services, the construction of a water filtration plant would have cost an estimated $6-8 billion, plus $300 million in annual running costs.

17. Sustainable living Humans are the only species on earth to deplete and waste natural capital (no such thing as “waste” in nature!) Sustainable living never uses non-renewable resources.

18. Sustainable living Sustainable living uses renewable resources only at the rate at which they can be replaced. e.g. cod fisheries collapse in the 1990s The highest rate a renewable resource can be used without being depleted is called its sustainable yield.

19. Sustainable living runoff of pesticides, fertilizers, and animal wastes pollution of land, water, and air resources destruction of wetlands erosion of soils deforestation urban sprawl Natural capital services can also be degraded by human activity: