Abstract

TRUJILLO-OSORIO, Catalina; ERASO-TORRES, Francisco Wilfredo  and  LOAIZA-TREJOS, Paola Andrea. The sustainability of territorial capital: methodological proposal for its analysis and valuation. Entramado [online]. 2018, vol.14, n.2, pp.50-72. ISSN 1900-3803.  https://doi.org/10.18041/1900-3803/entramado.2.4744.

The paper presents a methodological proposal to evaluate the sustainability of regional development processes, and identifies its effects on natural resources, defining the sustainable development as the improvement of human conditions through the maintenance of socio-ecological system. Thus, the concept of territorial capital is reinforced and used as a conceptual and methodological framework to assess the temporal and transversal sustainability of development, adding the principle of non-substitutability between capitals, and identifying the sustainability conditions that shall be accomplished by development processes. The article addresses three main aspects. First, from the conceptualization of sustainable development, the territorial capital is proposed as an analysis methodology second, a quantitative assessment methodology is built for partial and total capital sustainability; and third, the sustainability of Colombia's natural capital is assessed using the variable percentage of the departmental area with natural green cover It was found that the current land use and natural vegetation coverage at the country has a negative trend (-0.06), evidencing the unsustainability of economic development processes and policies on the country's forests areas. These results point to the urgent necessity to harmonize the economic growth with the conservation of forests resources and natural ecosystems. This methodology can be applied to any kind of capital or development process, becoming a practical tool to evaluate the sustainability of natural and social resources at territories..

JEL CLASSIFICATION: Q01, Q56.

Keywords : Territorial capital; sustainability development; natural capital; socioecological system.

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