[Some issues on assessing natural capital of environment and ecosystems].
Many researchers recently have paid attentions to analyzing ecosystem services and assessing natural capital stocks of environment and ecosystems. However, some works failed to make a distinction among the concepts, to evaluate the value and merit of ecosystems, and to integrate assessment approaches. This paper attempts to calibrate those deviations and to present new paradigm for monetary evaluation of ecosystem services and its capital stocks. Firstly, capital value of environment and ecosystems as well as species' value should be evaluated. Secondly, new comprehensive paradigm should be employed to assess the service value of environment and ecosystems, which integrates type and regional models. Thirdly, special attentions should be paid to patterns of natural capital of environment and ecosystems due to their spatial and temporal accumulations and flows. Finally, some suggestions are proposed for assessing natural capital.
Li
S
S
Department of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Center for Land Studies, Lab for Earth Surface Processes, Ministry of Education, Beijing 100871, China. scli@sohu.com
Zheng
D
D
Yang
Q
Q
D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources / Q000191:economics*; D017753:Ecosystem; D004777:Environment; D004784:Environmental Monitoring; D006801:Humans