Valuing Natural Capital

The policy brief highlights the economic importance of natural capital, noting that nature's services are valued at over 1.5 times global GDP. It emphasizes that Africa, despite possessing vast resources, is the only region where natural capital per capita declined between 1995 and 2018. The authors recommend that South Africa's 2025 G20 presidency should build consensus on a definition of natural capital, address data gaps through the G20 Data Gaps Initiative, and implement a bioeconomy hub to translate the Brazilian Bioeconomy Initiative into practical investment and growth.

• Traditional economic models fail to account for the decline in natural capital, despite estimates that the value of nature's services exceeds the world's gross domestic product (GDP) by more than one and a half times.
• Low-income countries are particularly dependent on natural capital, which accounted for 47% of their wealth according to 2018 estimates.
• Africa is the only region that has not seen sustainable per capita growth in natural capital, with values dropping from $4,374 to $2,877 per capita between 1995 and 2018 due to population growth, illegal activities, and poor governance.
• Standardizing natural capital as an asset class in national accounting could improve sovereign ratings for African countries and reduce their high borrowing costs.
• There is a lack of consensus on the definition of natural capital; the UK Natural Capital Committee uses a broad definition including ecosystems and processes, while the World Bank and UN use a narrower definition based on rents, excluding implicit values like air and sunshine.
• Significant data gaps persist in Africa, where natural capital was estimated at $6.2 trillion in 2018, a figure likely underestimated due to unreliable data.
• The authors propose that South Africa's G20 presidency should establish a bioeconomy hub to facilitate private-public partnerships and implement the Brazilian G20 Bioeconomy Initiative.

APA

MC LEAN, J., & RUBIDGE, L. (2024). Valuing Natural Capital. South African Institute of International Affairs. https://saiia.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/SAIIA_PN_8_G20NaturalCapital.pdf

Chicago

MC LEAN, JORDAN, and LAURA RUBIDGE. Valuing Natural Capital. South African Institute of International Affairs, 2024. https://saiia.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/SAIIA_PN_8_G20NaturalCapital.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=MC LEAN |first1=JORDAN |last2=RUBIDGE |first2=LAURA |title=Valuing Natural Capital |publisher=South African Institute of International Affairs |date=8 September 2024 |url=https://saiia.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/SAIIA_PN_8_G20NaturalCapital.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{mclean2024valuing, author = {MC LEAN, JORDAN and RUBIDGE, LAURA}, title = {{Valuing Natural Capital}}, institution = {South African Institute of International Affairs}, year = {2024}, month = sep, url = {https://saiia.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/SAIIA_PN_8_G20NaturalCapital.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }