Natural Capital Institute

The post-Columbian world marked the beginning of environmental globalization, starting with the migration of insects, vermin, plants, trees, tubers, food, bacteria, and diseases and ending up with the export of toxic chemicals. The cuddly European rabbit, which barely survived in Spain during the last ice age, was a migrant exported to every continent except Antarctica. It modified, if not ravaged, the environment wherever it munched, especially in Australia, where the rabbit population could reach a billion after a wet spring. After 500 years, the situation is no better. DDT, banned by the EPA in 1972, is distributed over the western United States in plumes of polluted air drifting across the Pacific courtesy of Chinese agriculture. Even when environmental problems are regional, the effects cannot be contained. Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) made by Monsanto in the 1970s migrate up the 21st-century food chain in the Great Lakes, into a walleye, onto a grill, and finally into a pregnant woman, potentially altering her child’s limbic system and behavior for the next 70 years. Regional salinization of ancient Middle East breadbaskets because of overzealous irrigation changed human history, as will the overzealous flooding of greenhouses gases double-glazing the stratosphere. The epiphany John Muir experienced in the Sierra Nevada about everything being hitched to everything else arises whenever we overstep environmental limits. That realization, nascent though it may be in a historical sense, is almost universally understood in today’s world, especially with the advent of climate change. However, it is not universally acted upon, which is why there is an environmental movement.

– from Blessed Unrest




	The Natural Capital Institute was founded in 2002. Past projects include: Researching the world’s non-governmental-organizations working in the field of Clean Water and Sanitation. We created a database of direct-effect organizations, and identified key leverage opportunities for grantmaking foundations and concerned individuals. Publishing a report analyzing Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) in 2004. We identified the world’s 600+ retail mutual funds that screen portfolios against non-financial criteria, examined current portfolio practices and fund allocation, and made five specific recommendations for improving industry practices. Creating www.ResponsibleInvesting.org, a public education website containing complete equity holdings and screening categories of SRI mutual funds in the US and Canada. We collected and catalogued fund information, published the database online, and enabled visitors to view the distribution of their investments in order to make more informed decisions. In January 2005, along with local and global volunteers, we began creating WiserEarth, the first open source, community editable online database to identify and connect the hundreds of thousands of organizations and individuals throughout the world working in the fields of environmental sustainability and social justice. (2005 – present) In summer 2005, we launched our Corporate Accountability Program, providing direct consultation and guidance to the top tier of corporate management in order to bring awareness of the true social and environmental costs of corporate activities, motivate leaders to account for these costs, and facilitate the implementation of the systemic tools necessary to do so. The Corporate Accountability Project spawned work on WiserBusiness, envisioned as a clearinghouse of responsible business practices and resources. Like WiserEarth, it will be a community-based, open-source free-content website that is comprehensive in scope and collaboratively written. It will be the most extensive — and most accessible — body of collective knowledge centered on responsible business. .				The post-Columbian world marked the beginning of environmental globalization, starting with the migration of insects, vermin, plants, trees, tubers, food, bacteria, and diseases and ending up with the export of toxic chemicals. The cuddly European rabbit, which barely survived in Spain during the last ice age, was a migrant exported to every continent except Antarctica. It modified, if not ravaged, the environment wherever it munched, especially in Australia, where the rabbit population could reach a billion after a wet spring. After 500 years, the situation is no better. DDT, banned by the EPA in 1972, is distributed over the western United States in plumes of polluted air drifting across the Pacific courtesy of Chinese agriculture. Even when environmental problems are regional, the effects cannot be contained. Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) made by Monsanto in the 1970s migrate up the 21st-century food chain in the Great Lakes, into a walleye, onto a grill, and finally into a pregnant woman, potentially altering her child’s limbic system and behavior for the next 70 years. Regional salinization of ancient Middle East breadbaskets because of overzealous irrigation changed human history, as will the overzealous flooding of greenhouses gases double-glazing the stratosphere. The epiphany John Muir experienced in the Sierra Nevada about everything being hitched to everything else arises whenever we overstep environmental limits. That realization, nascent though it may be in a historical sense, is almost universally understood in today’s world, especially with the advent of climate change. However, it is not universally acted upon, which is why there is an environmental movement. – from Blessed Unrest
					© 2007 Natural Capital Institute