Managing natural capital at Higher Level: The same statement as SL, with different real cases: New Zealand's fish quotas, the Aral Sea, the Gulf of Mexico dead zone, Atlantic bluefin tuna and Costa Rica's payments for forests. At HL, judge each tool through economics and law: who pays, who enforces, and what is lost in the meantime.
Practise this as you read
- Explain the two rules with a harvesting and a pollution example.
- Evaluate a management tool, both ways, then judge.
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Live on the interest: Sustainable resource management follows two rules: take no more than nature replaces, and dump no more than nature can break down.
The two rules
- Use renewable resources no faster than they regenerate: live on the natural income, keep the capital.
- Release wastes no faster than they can be transformed (broken down or absorbed) by nature.
- Sustainable yield: the harvest that can be taken each year without reducing the stock.
- Maximum sustainable yield (MSY): the largest such harvest; taking more makes the stock decline.
- Break either rule and both ecosystems and people are harmed over time.
Remember it as: Take no more than grows back; dump no more than nature breaks down.
Real example: in 1986 New Zealand set a total catch for each fish species from estimates of its sustainable yield, and shared it as quotas that fishers own and can trade. Catches are cut when surveys show a stock shrinking.
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When either rule is broken, the damage spreads from the ecosystem to the people who depend on it.
Harvesting too fast
- River water taken for cotton
- The lake shrank and turned salty
- Fishing ended; toxic dust harmed health
Wastes faster than nature copes
- Fertiliser carried down the Mississippi
- Algae rot and use up oxygen
- A dead zone with almost no fish
Real example: from the 1960s, rivers feeding the Aral Sea were diverted to grow cotton. It lost about 90% of its water, its fishing industry died and salty dust now harms people's lungs. Each summer, fertiliser from farms along the Mississippi creates a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico; in 2017 it covered about 22,700 km².
Ecosystem AND society: For each example, give one harm to the ecosystem and one to people: fewer fish, then lost jobs.
A toolbox, not one tool: Sustainable management balances economic use with environmental protection and fairness. It uses rules, money and new technology together.
Principles of sustainable management
- Three pillars: environmental (healthy ecosystems), economic (lasting income), social (fair shares).
- Precautionary principle: act to prevent harm even without full scientific certainty.
- Polluter pays: those who cause pollution bear its costs.
- Intergenerational equity: leave enough for future generations.
- Substitution and efficiency: swap scarce resources for renewable ones; get more from less.
- Judge a strategy by effectiveness, cost, feasibility, equity and scalability.
Rules
- Quotas and logging permits
- Protected areas and marine reserves
- Laws, pollution limits, impact assessments
- Moratoriums, e.g. on whaling
- Certification: FSC timber, MSC fish
Money
- Taxes and charges on extraction or pollution
- Subsidies for sustainable options
- Tradeable permits for emissions or catch
- Payments to landowners for ecosystem services
- Governments buying green products
Technology and behaviour
- Recycling and a circular economy
- Substitution of scarce materials
- Efficiency: less resource per product
- Using less: sharing, repairing, eating less meat
Real example: Atlantic bluefin tuna were overfished for decades. From 2007 the countries that share them cut quotas sharply and fought illegal fishing, and in 2021 the IUCN moved the species from Endangered to Least Concern, though the western stock is still low.
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Questions ask how to manage a named renewable resource. Fish and forests come up most.
Managing fish sustainably
- Estimate the MSY and set quotas at or below it, agreed nationally and internationally.
- Protect young fish: bigger net mesh, closed breeding seasons.
- Use selective gear: cut bycatch, ban bottom trawling; create marine protected areas.
- Monitor boats (e.g. by satellite), fine illegal fishing, certify sustainable catches.
- Aquaculture: fewer fish per tank, fewer antibiotics, treat waste water, mix species (polyculture).
- Educate fishers and fund research on how fast each species grows.
On land, the shape of the land matters. Steep slopes make forestry harder to run sustainably.
Managing forests on slopes
- Felling and replanting on steep slopes is harder and costs more.
- Bare slopes lose soil to run-off, erosion and landslides, so new trees regrow slowly.
- Access roads are hard to build and keep open on steep, eroding ground.
- Mountain tourism can conflict with logging; but empty uplands leave land available.
- Sustainable forestry: selective felling, replanting native trees, protecting seedlings.
Real example: about two-thirds of Japan is forest, much of it cedar and cypress planted on steep slopes after 1945. Harvesting the slopes is so costly that many plantations are left unmanaged while Japan imports timber.
Link every strategy: Say how each strategy keeps the harvest within regrowth: 'bigger mesh, so young fish survive to breed', not just 'bigger mesh'.
A useful way of thinking?: Seeing nature as natural capital gives a simple rule: spend the income, never the capital. Essays ask how far that idea really helps.
It helps
- A clear rule: harvest only the income
- Basis for MSY, quotas and footprints
- Puts a value on services so they count
- Stresses keeping future income
Its limits
- Natural income is hard to measure
- MSY ignores the wider ecosystem
- Treats nature as a thing to sell
- Ignores intrinsic and cultural value
Real example: since 1997 Costa Rica has paid landowners for the services their forests give, such as clean water and carbon storage. Forest cover, about a fifth of the land in the 1980s, is now over half.
Optimal, not maximum: Many managers aim below MSY, at an optimal sustainable yield, because MSY estimates are often too high.
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How this comes up: Paper 2, Section B (b): a 7-mark explain question. Harm to the ecosystem AND to people, all from one named example.
In 1960 the Aral Sea was the fourth-largest lake in the world. By 2010 most of it had dried up.
With reference to a named example, explain how excessive harvesting of a natural resource can harm both ecosystems and societies.
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