Natural Capital Symposium returns to Stanford
In early June, more than 400 people came together from more than 45 countries, each with different backgrounds, expertise, and goals, yet all with a unifying concept in mind: we can create a better future through investing in nature. This gathering, held June 4-7 at Stanford University, drew leaders and experts not only from academia and NGOs, but from international financial institutions like multilateral development banks, the U.S. Treasury and U.S. Department of Commerce, country ministries of finance, and private companies.
This year’s Natural Capital Symposium focused on mainstreaming natural capital approaches – which quantify nature’s benefits to people – so they become part of the standard operations and performance measures of governments and financial institutions.
“We are seeing these approaches take flight. Yet none of this work is easy – in fact, it is hard, much of it borne of crisis. We come to realize we are dependent not just on nature, but on one another. Yet there is joy in being able to team up together, to learn from one another, from all around the world,” said Gretchen Daily, faculty director and co-founder of the Stanford-based Natural Capital Project (NatCap), which organizes the symposium.
Symposium sessions highlighted the wide-ranging ways different sectors and actors are taking up methods of measuring, modeling, and mapping nature’s benefits, and using this information in policy and finance mechanisms to help achieve a range of biodiversity, climate, and human development goals.
“Nature’s benefits can transform society,” said Mary Ruckelshaus, executive director of NatCap. “We have a real opportunity to live a better way, to live a better life.”
Ruckelshaus added, “Finance for nature is starting to flow, though clearly more is needed. But it is already outstripping the expertise to implement these approaches. We need to develop that capacity.”
Symposium attendees heard a keynote from Chris Schell, assistant professor in the University of California-Berkeley Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, on reframing cities as solutions to the biodiversity crisis.
“If we ignore urban environments,” he said, pointing out that more than half the global population lives in cities, and 80% of the U.S. population, “we are giving up on ourselves.” He also noted that 463 significant cities are located in biodiversity hotspots. Schell called on participants to view urban nature, and equitable access to it, as an essential component of efforts to restore biodiversity and its benefits to people.
NatCap partners from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Stockholm Resilience Center, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the University of Minnesota, and WWF attended, presenting sessions on adoption of Gross Ecosystem Product (GEP) around the world, finance for biodiversity, and the confluence of nature and art. Other sessions at the event focused on natural capital accounting; advancing private sector action for nature and biodiversity; the frontiers of nature and health; and the need for environmental justice and equity throughout this work. The event also featured a poster session; contributed abstract sessions on a range of topics; and trainings on sustainability for business, and on InVEST®, NatCap’s open-source ecosystem services software.
Session on private sector action for nature. Photo credit: Mark Costa/Cyperus Media.
Session on equity, justice, and reciprocal relationships with nature. Photo credit: Talia Trepte.
A new short film, highlighting collaborative work on natural capital approaches in Belize that have laid the foundation for future innovation and nature financing, aired for the first time during the Symposium.
“My favorite thing about this event is to see people coming together, from all over the world, to share ideas, swap stories of practical implementation, forge new partnerships, build their networks, advance science, ask questions, and create new–and rekindle old–relationships with nature,” said Anne Guerry, NatCap’s chief strategy officer and lead scientist. “Though we tend to take it for granted, nature sustains and fulfills human life. It is so inspiring to see what this global community is doing and to envision together ways to use natural capital approaches to co-create a future where people and nature thrive together.”
In her remarks, Daily quoted from Gore Vidal, saying, “Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”
The Natural Capital Project is a global partnership based out of the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and its Woods Institute for the Environment, as well as the Stanford School of Humanities & Sciences.
Gretchen Daily is also the Bing Professor of Environmental Science at Stanford University.
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