Forschungskolloquium KG: Natural Capital Between Greening GDP and Private Finance for Nature – 28.01.2026
Christiane Heisse, Universität Bayreuth
Natural Capital Between Greening GDP and Private Finance for Nature
Wann: 28.01.2026
Wo: Seminarraum 00.175, Tennenlohe, Wetterkreuz 15
Moderation: Dr. des. Lena Schlegel
Critics have long argued that mainstream economics’ reductionist frameworks are ill-equipped to deal with systemic crises such as climate change and biodiversity breakdown. Yet there is no shortage of approaches that extend neoclassical principles to nature-economy relations, many of which find ample application beyond the academy. This talk traces the conceptual and practical genealogy of the natural capital concept from its origins in sustainable development debates of the 1990s until today. Originally a theoretical concern relating to modelling sustainable development and environmental accounting practices, natural capital has rapidly been translated into policy and business practices. Drawing on case study material from my PhD dissertation – including interviews with practitioners at the World Bank and beyond – I argue that the natural capital concept has become increasingly detached from its theoretical moorings over time. Contextualising this within wider developments in the political economy of development shows that while natural capital discourse was originally deployed with the aim of influencing policy decisions, it is now overwhelmingly discussed in the context of greening finance. This shift towards finance and financialisation is emblematic of the wider subordination of complex more-than-human realities to quantitative metrics in the interest of Capital, ultimately revealing the practical limitations of relying on economics’ reductionist approaches in tackling systemic environmental issues.
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