Narrow Results

Pricing the natural capital is very critical for the achievement of carbon neutrality. This paper uses the Shephard input distance function to derive the shadow price of natural capital under regulatory constraints, which corrects the biased estimates without these constraints of previous studies. We relax the assumption of cost-minimizing behavior at market price and incorporate the price inefficiency in our model. This model is applied to the Chinese provincial dataset from 2004 to 2017. We observe that the average shadow prices of mineral, water, woodland and forest are 391CNY/metric tons of coal equivalent (tce), 0.13CNY/m³, 772CNY/hm² and 344CNY/hm², respectively. For the dynamic effect, the shadow prices of natural capital rise sharply between 2004 and 2014. By testing the price efficiency, we demonstrate that regulatory constraints have an impact on shadow prices of natural capital in practice.

Coordinating ecological protection and economic development is a dilemma for resource-based cities to achieve sustainable development. This paper is the first study to estimate the causal impact of sustainable development planning on natural capital. We take the release of the Sustainable Development Plan for Resource-based Cities (SDPRC) as an exogenous shock and find that the SDPRC significantly increases the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) in resource-based counties. Heterogeneous analyses suggest that the impact is larger in counties with better economic performance, larger scale, and located in western and northeastern regions. Moreover, the effects of the SDPRC in different types of counties on natural capital are heterogeneous. This paper underscores the importance of policies aiming for promoting sustainable development, which increases natural capital and coordinates economic development and ecological protection in resource-based counties.

This study focuses on the contribution of natural capital to achieving carbon neutrality in China based on the provincial data from 1998 to 2019. This paper first measures the natural capital of each province by ecological footprint (EF), then explores the contribution of natural capital on carbon total factor productivity (CTFP) through a global non-radial Luenberger productivity indicator (GLPI), and decomposes the new CTFP into efficiency change (EC) and technical change (TC). We find that the contribution of natural capital to CTFP is relatively small, mainly due to the negative impact of infrastructure land and energy footprint and the decline of the marginal effect of natural capital and environmental carrying capacity. Second, technology innovation is still a main driver of promoting the CTFP of EF. Third, the contribution of natural capital to CTFP varies greatly with different types of natural capital and regions. We provide corresponding policy implications based on the main conclusions.

The wetlands of the Gulf Coast region of the United States are under pressure from relative sea level rise and subsidence pressures that threaten to alter fishery breeding grounds and increase expected damage from stochastic storm events, among other issues. Barrier islands, marshes, and swamps are thus forms of natural capital that serve an intermediate role in supporting fishery stocks, as well as a final demand role in providing direct protection to infrastructure. In order to make good policy choices related to land loss, the values associated with these interacting stocks must be estimated. In this paper, the numerical approach of Fenichel and Abbott (2014) is extended as a proof of concept in order to illustrate the valuation of fish and wetlands stocks, allowing for the recovery of final demand and intermediate service values, and taking into account the scarcity value of each resource. Examples of policies which, when implemented, will change the subsequent valuation of each resource are also presented.

The Climate Disclosure Standards Board (CDSB) is a non-profit organization that works to provide decision-useful environmental information to markets via mainstream corporate reports. The mission of CDSB is to create the enabling conditions for material climate change and natural capital information to be integrated into mainstream corporate reporting. It is committed to advancing and aligning the global mainstream corporate reporting model to equate natural capital with financial capital. CDSB aims to achieve its mission by offering a framework for reporting environmental information with the same rigor as financial information.