Can you put a price on nature? A Californian nonprofit thinks it can

Chemical giant Dow is testing new software that crunches data to help assign monetary value to the natural world and calculate the environmental impact of its work

Everyone agrees that nature has value. It clothes, feeds and shelters us - and provides a spectacular playground. Yet we have never put a value on everything nature offers.

Now, environmental and sustainable business consultants want to change that by forcing corporate leaders to take stock of the economic impact of how they manage natural resources. By accounting for this so-called natural capital, the advocates hope to see more businesses adopting practices that are both good for the environment and long term profitability, especially as climate change will further deplete natural resources, causing their values to climb and increase the cost of running business. In a 1997 paper in Nature that first introduced the natural capital concept, the 13 researchers involved pegged the Earth's worth at $33tn. A 2014 revision raised that figure to $134tn.