2017 Volume 10 Issue 2 Pages 18-31
This paper reviews the argument over the concept of "critical natural capital" (hereafter, CNC), which was proposed to focus on the non-substitutability of natural capital. It attempts to clarify the issues and challenges of putting the CNC concept into operation. Specifically, I examined the framework that was developed in Ekins et al. (2003) to specify CNC by physical conditions such as non-substitutability, irreversibility, immoderate loss, etc. These conditions have been thought of as appropriate by other authors, however, I argue that one can specify CNC at will using the framework of Ekins et al. (2003) since those conditions are not strictly defined. Incorporating other relevant issues such as technological development or discount factor into the framework of CNC, we need to refine the CNC conditions further.
