No Accounting for Taste: Natural Capital Accounting and the Financialization of Nature

Natural capital accounting is the latest effort to financialize our air, water, forests and land by putting a price on nature to save it. In the name of sustainable economic development, focusing on our natural capital, or environmental “assets,” the theory claims that if private companies and countries account for environmental resources used in the production of other goods — accounting for their cost to the environment — we can better see the sustainability of our current economic path. The hope is that this knowledge will lead us to mitigate the chances of degrading natural resources beyond their renewable capacity.