Encouraging Benign Development
Natural Capitalism evolved out of the work by Amory Lovins and Paul Hawkens, two pioneers of future economic trends. Natural Capitalism is a system that, in addition to the mainstream measures of:
- financial capital: cash and investments
- manufacturing capital: infrastructure, factories, machines and tools
- human capital: labour, intelligence, culture and organisation, and
- natural capital: resources, living systems and ecosystem services.
Natural Capitalism has four strategies:
- Resource Productivity: to slow resource depletion, lower pollution, increase meaningful employment, lower costs and halt degradation of the atmosphere;
- Biomimicry: redesign along biological principles, completely eliminate waste and toxicity;
- Service and Flow Economy: using close loop circles of material use to meet customers changing needs with no deterioration in quality;
- Natural Capital: reinvesting in sustaining, restoring and expanding natural capital to produce abundant natural resources and ecosystem services.
Implementing Natural Capitalism requires a reorientation, and revaluing our work by:
- Redefining prosperity in a way that weighs community values, quality of life, and the environment alongside economic considerations;
- Seeking true development, where development is defined as getting better, rather than simply expanding;
- Advocating the long-term stewardship of community resources (natural, economic, social and cultural), to ensure that present actions don’t erode the foundations of future prosperity;
- Pursuing self-reliance and a largely democratic approach to decision making which represents broad community interests rather than those of a few; and
- Emphasising the importance of diversity, resilience and the recognition that one-size solutions do not fit all.
By its own accord, this system encourages development towards complete, optimal sustainable solutions.
Maleny Strategic Alliance co-founder Jill Jordan describes Maleny as a bottom up process stimulated and carried forward by community members, and cites the four important elements of this model for the Maleny experience as being:
- Plugging the leaks – that is, developing strategies that produce import substitution to stimulate the local economy;
- Supporting existing local businesses – by both promoting them and encouraging them to respond to local needs and advantages;
- Facilitating the start-up of appropriate new businesses – which involves community agreement on what is ‘appropriate’ and the existence of a mature business support network;
- Encouraging the entry or expansion of external businesses that are appropriate to the region and community.