Natural capital assessment as a tool for regional development

The research is devoted to the problem of increasing the ecological and economic efficiency of nature management in the Kamchatka Krai and its surrounding marine areas (research area). An important tool in solving this problem is a direct cost assessment of all economically signifi cant components of the natural resource potential of the region as elements of the natural capital of the research area. In the methodological plan, the purpose and tasks of the work are clarifi cation of the composition and structure of the assessment object taking into account its specifi cs in the research area, the choice and adaptation of methodological and information support for the cost assessment of the natural resource potential of the region as its natural capital; in practical terms, it is the implementation of the cost assessment of the natural resource potential of the research area as its natural capital. The article has developed an original open classifi cation of economically signifi cant benefi ts of living and non-living nature with the allocation of an independent block of biodiversity services from ecosystem services. The authors have carried out the cost estimation of the main components of the region’s natural resource potential as elements of its natural capital. In the presented assessment of the natural capital of the region, 78% is the cost of ecosystem services. Most of the natural resources and ecosystem services in the region that are already used or ready to use in the economy have been capitalized on the basis of direct rental rather than indirect valuation methods. For the fi rst time, the paper evaluates services of the region’s marine ecosystems for the long-term deposition of atmospheric carbon and its fossilization (irrevocable burial). The results can be used in the development of strategic and program documents aimed at improving the ecological and economic effi ciency of nature management in the research area and in the Far East of the country as a whole.