Ki te pūwaha te tai nei, hoea tahi tātou; by paddling as one we can get the canoe past the waves to calmer waters.

John Morgan, Chief Executive, NIWA

It's hard to believe that this wonderful image was taken more than 50 years ago.

The crew of Apollo 8 – the first humans to leave the earth's orbit – stumbled on it on Christmas Eve, 1968. They were coming around the dark side of the moon photographing craters in black and white, when Astronaut Bill Anders happened to look out one of the lunar module's side windows. Anders quickly loaded some colour film, and in the following seconds he captured the first full glimpse of our planet set against the vastness of the universe.

The image has become famously known as 'Earthrise'. Capturing it was never part of the mission plan, but ironically Earthrise, and the thinking it has provoked, has perhaps been one of the mission's greatest legacies. As Anders himself said a few years ago on the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 8 mission:

"We set out to discover the moon ... and discovered the earth instead."

Before Earthrise, we could almost convince ourselves that our world and our resources were limitless. Up until that moment, our world view had been shaped by a very different perspective – yes, we could fly, but our horizons were still determined    by the limited parts of our planet we could see from the air. It was still easy to believe that our mountains, and the fresh air above them, marched on regardless, that our fertile grasslands and forests were ever growing, and that there would always be more fish in our oceans.

But once we saw our world from deep space, it was clear that we had been hostage to those horizons. For the first time, we could see the whole earth with our own eyes. And the little blue marble floating against the immense blackness of space was, in fact, very small in the scale of things. Very beautiful and vital, but it also looks very vulnerable. Some credit Earthrise for fuelling the surge of environmental awareness   over the past half century. That is perhaps too big a claim, but it is certainly an image that captures the essence of 'Natural Capital'.

The concept that our prosperity, in fact all life as we know it, is totally dependent on how we manage the natural resources around us is simple to grasp when you actually see the physical limits of that world. And the sense of responsibility that comes with having to manage those natural resources is equally easy to grasp when you see how finite, interconnected and vulnerable our planet really is. It has taken us a while to grasp the reality of this simple notion.

Natural capital is frequently misrepresented as simply a way of 'ascribing dollar figures to our natural assets'. Cynics sometimes dismiss it as a way to enable authorities and large companies to justify their environmental damage by undervaluing the cost of their resource use as 'the cost of doing business’.

But the idea of valuing ecosystem services and the complex web of benefits and dependencies that come from our air, water, soils and oceans is far more complex than could ever be summed up in a simple system of environmental accounting. Natural capital is about looking at using our resources in a way that is sustainable and builds a better future for both the environment and our society at large.

Our growth as a species is built on our evolving understanding of the value of the available natural resources:

• understanding how animals migrated allowed the early hunter gatherers to prosper,

• understanding how plants grow created the agricultural revolution,

• understanding metals drove the bronze and the iron ages ... just as the industrial revolution was fueled by coal and oil, and

• understanding natural elements of fertilisers has allowed the earth to support billions of people.

We've been quick learners at times ... and very slow at others. What has come late is the understanding that all these resources interact in a complex way, and the consequences of over-use can be catastrophic and unconstrained. The importance of this is underlined in the Aotearoa Circle’s Marine Scenarios report, for example, which emphasises the need for a strategic response by government, business and other stakeholders to meet the challenges ahead. We are finally starting to value our natural resources in more sophisticated ways.

Take New Zealand's coastal waters, for example. What are they really worth? For many years we simply measured their value in what we pulled up from our coasts by net or by hand – like the half a billion dollars' worth of finfish, paua and crayfish we harvest from our inshore fisheries every year. But, as valuable as that harvest is, it is only one small part of the real value stored along our coasts. Before the Covid-19 disruption, international tourism brought in about $14 billion dollars a year, and twice as many tourists came to visit our beaches and our coastline as came to see our national parks. That, too, is merely a component.

The great power in the concept of natural capital is that it allows you to see the wood for the trees. Unlike our ancestors, who understood the value of one resource at a time, we now see that real long-term value of our environment comes from working sustainably with it.

It is powerful knowledge to have. Because when we invest in our natural capital, sustainable long-term benefits flow. Large-scale investments in our natural capital, while often controversial, can also deliver game-changing results.

The billion-tree planting programme will clearly generate substantial forestry and employment returns, but it will also bring massive benefits for health and recreation as well as carbon sequestration and other ecosystem benefits.

The World Bank estimates that New Zealand ranks eighth out of 120 countries in natural capital per capita, outranked only by petroleum-exporting countries. Our economic story is a story of dependence on our key natural resources – our fresh water, our soils, our atmosphere and our oceans. Pre-Covid, some 70 percent of our export income was directly sourced from these natural assets – our primary sector and tourism sectors earned almost $65 billion. To put that figure into perspective, we were spending more than $60 billion on welfare, health and education. There is almost a direct correlation between what we spend on these core services that shape our society, and how we fund them through our ability to leverage our natural capital.

And for most of us living in this paradise called New Zealand, we want to ensure a better standard of living and quality of life for future generations. Our ability to do that will depend on how we can sustainably grow our natural capital.

There is also a deeper reason for the need to invest wisely in enriching our natural capital – as New Zealanders, we identify deeply with our natural world. Preserving what is good in it for future generations is fundamental to our wellbeing. What happens if we can't gather kai moana from our beaches, swim in our rivers, or walk in our forests? Pressure is mounting on our waterways, our marine environments and our land – we are nudging up against environmental limits and in many respects have overrun them.

We need to recalibrate, and I am heartened by the collective will in the Aotearoa Circle to do so. Doing our part to help preserve Earth's natural capital, whilst improving  the quality of life for the 7.8 billion people who live on this vulnerable planet, is a much more significant mission than shooting for the stars. It is a challenge which Astronaut Bill Anders recognised very clearly, 50 years after he took that simple photo of the earth rising above the moon's barren surface. To paraphrase Bill Anders: Earth is our new frontier.