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America’s most notorious conservation opponents have launched an all-out assault on an emerging mechanism to restore and protect nature, and in the process, have scared themselves into a brand new conspiracy theory that tries to tie Wall Street investors to the Interior department and America’s public lands.
In a new Westwise blog post, CWP deputy director Aaron Weiss pulls back the curtain on the conspiracy theory around Natural Asset Companies, a proposal for a new kind of company to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. NACs would put a value not just on the products or resources extracted from the land, but on the land itself, and the services those ecosystems provide to the entire world—like clean air, water, habitat, and carbon storage.
The conspiracy theory around NACs has been led by American Stewards of Liberty, one of the most vocal anti-conservation groups. Now the GOP establishment, including Republican attorneys general and a congressional committee, are buying into the theory as well, drawing an imaginary connection to an unrelated proposal from the Interior department, the Bureau of Land Management’s Conservation and Landscape Health Rule.
In reality, the two proposals are completely separate, and neither of them would lead to public lands being sold off, as opponents claim. So what's behind the fearmongering? As Weiss explains, proposals like Natural Asset Companies provide a way to put an economic value on nature itself, using the tools that already exist in modern accounting. And if your business is based entirely on extracting value from the land, it’s threatening when Wall Street suggests that there could be more economic benefit in leaving the land intact. For example, If oil companies were to account for the damage their product causes to ecosystems and the Earth’s climate, it would undoubtedly do significant damage to their balance sheets.
The BLM’s proposed conservation rule has nothing to do with this theoretical accounting future. It just happens to be moving through the regulatory process at the same time that Wall Street is considering letting some companies voluntarily account for the value of nature.
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These consensus-based recommendations give the BLM options to adjust management prescriptions in a targeted way, to meet the needs of local economies, recreation and conservation interests.”
