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Interest in the concept of natural capital stems from the key role which this concept plays in certain attempts to elucidate the goal of sustainable development—a goal which currently preoccupies environmental policy-makers. My purpose in this paper is to examine the viability of what, adapting an expression of Bryan Norton's, may be termed the ‘social scientific approach’ to natural capital (Norton, 1992, p. 97). This approach largely determines the way in which environmental concern is currently being represented in the environmental policy community.
1 Hence I am not simply reiterating the theological defence against the problem of evil, which claims that this is the best of all possible worlds.
2 The judgement is simple. The reasons for making it are complex, and nowhere more eloquently elaborated than in Holmes Rolston's Environmental Ethics (Rolston, 1988).
