Abstract
The notion that environmental resources should be viewed as capital is certainly gaining acceptance. Such resources, even if they are not appropriable, do contribute to the productive process, or otherwise yield utilities for which users are willing to pay a price, either directly or indirectly.1 Practically all natural resources are depletable, but some of them are also renewable, i.e. capable of being regenerated by nature, or more often by nature with human assistance. Sometimes even renewable resources can rationally be “mined”to extinction by their owners in deliberate acts of capital consumption.
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References
El Serafy, S. [ 1991 ] “The Environment as Capital,“ in R. Costanza (ed.),Ecological Economics: The Science and Management of Sustainability, Columbia Press, New York.
El Serafy, S. [ 1981 ] “Absorptive Capacity, the Demand for Revenue and the Supply of Petroleum,” Journal of Energy and Development, Volume VII, No. 1, Autumn; and El Serafy, S. [1989] “The Proper Calculation of Income from Depletable Natural Resources,” in Ahmad, Y. A.et al., a UNEP World Bank Symposium, Washington, D.C.
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El Serafy method“ to re-estimate national or regional income include for the United States Herman E. Daly and John B. Cobb, Jr. For the Common Good (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989, pp. 419 and 437–40)
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Hartwick, J. M. [ 1991 ] “Economic Depreciation of Mineral Stocks and El Serafy’s User Cost.” (Mimeographed). See also Hartwick, J. M. and Hageman [1991] “Economic Depreciation of Mineral Stocks and the Contribution of El Serafy,” Environment Department Divisional Working Paper No. 27, The World Bank, November 1991.
This latter formula appeared also in El Serafy, S. [1981].
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© 1993 Physica-Verlag Heidelberg
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El Serafy, S. (1993). Depletable Resources: Fixed Capital or Inventories?. In: Franz, A., Stahmer, C. (eds) Approaches to Environmental Accounting. Contributions to Economics. Physica, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-49977-7_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-49977-7_12
Publisher Name: Physica, Heidelberg
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