Real Capital Reading List

These books are not simply “books about sustainability.” Together they describe the intellectual territory from which the Real Capital Framework emerges:

ecological limits → systems → stocks and development → design → management → economics → law and governance → regional application.

The Real Capital Framework begins with a simple proposition: human wellbeing and economic activity ultimately depend upon real stocks and capacities. These include the condition of natural systems, the built environment, human capabilities and the social institutions that enable people to cooperate. The works in this reading list provide complementary perspectives on how these systems function, how they interact, the limits within which they operate, how they can be designed, and how they can be managed for the long term.

For a region, this perspective shifts attention from economic activity alone to the underlying condition and maturity of the real capital upon which that activity—and the wellbeing and resilience of the population—ultimately depend.

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1. Understanding systems and limits

Question: What are the limits of the system, and what happens when society exceeds them?

2. Understanding Natural Capital

Question: What are the living systems upon which society depends, and what obligations do we have towards them?

3. Understanding Human and Social Capital

Question: What enables people to develop capabilities and cooperate to manage shared resources?

4. Understanding sufficiency and provisioning

Question: What does it mean for society to have enough?

5. Understanding management

Question: How do we manage systems and assets over time rather than merely measure short-term outputs?

6. Understanding the financial economy

Question: What is the relationship between financial claims and the real productive and ecological economy?

Detailed Reading List for Understanding the Real Capital Framework

1. Thinking in Systems: A Primer — Donella H. Meadows

Probably the best conceptual starting point for understanding the Real Capital Framework.

Meadows explains how systems consist of stocks, flows, feedback loops and relationships. This is fundamental to RCF because the four capitals are not simply four categories of things: they are interdependent stocks and capacities whose condition determines what a society or region is able to do.

Connection to a region:
A region is itself a system. Its forests, soils, infrastructure, skills, institutions, businesses and communities interact through feedback loops. A problem in one capital can propagate through others. Systems thinking therefore helps a Regional Resilience Centre avoid treating problems in isolation.

RCF connection: ★★★★★

2. The Limits to Growth — Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers and William W. Behrens III

This is one of the foundational works behind the idea that economic activity ultimately depends upon physical and ecological systems.

Its importance for RCF is that it challenges the assumption that financial growth can continue independently of the condition of the real world. Population, industrial output, resources, pollution and food are treated as interacting elements of a finite planetary system.

Connection to a region:
It raises the question that every region should ask:

What are the real stocks and capacities upon which our future depends?

A region cannot be understood merely through GDP, employment or company turnover. It must also understand its land, water, ecosystems, infrastructure and human capabilities.

RCF connection: ★★★★★

3. Johan Rockström and the Planetary Boundaries Breaking Boundaries

In 2009, scientists identified nine planetary boundaries that keep Earth stable, ranging from biodiversity to ozone. Beyond these boundaries lurk tipping points. To stop short of these tipping points, the 2020s must see the fastest economic transition in history.

This book demonstrates how societies are reaching positive tipping points that make this transition possible: Activism groups such as Extinction Rebellion, or schoolchildren inspired by Greta Thunberg demand political action; countries are committing to eliminating greenhouse gas emissions; and one tipping point has even already passed – the price of clean energy has dropped below that of fossil fuels.

The important intellectual contribution to the Real Capital Framework is clear.

The Planetary Boundaries framework defines the biophysical conditions within which human civilisation can safely operate.

For RCF, this is particularly important because it provides an answer to a question that is sometimes missing from capital-based approaches:

What does it mean to manage capital successfully if the wider Earth system is being destabilised?

Connection to a region:
A region may be economically successful while contributing to global overshoot. Conversely, regional management must ask how local natural capital relates to planetary boundaries—for example through carbon, biodiversity, land use, freshwater and nutrient flows.

This provides a strong connection to your developing argument that:

A thriving region must develop and maintain its real capital while remaining within planetary boundaries.

RCF connection: ★★★★★

4. Introduction to Permaculture — Bill Mollison with Reny Mia Slay / David Holmgren’s permaculture work

David Holmgren’s major later work is Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability, while Introduction to Permaculture is associated principally with Bill Mollison and Reny Mia Slay. Holmgren’s work is especially relevant because it develops permaculture as a system of design principles applicable to landscapes, communities and human systems.

Permaculture is highly relevant to RCF because it asks:

How can we deliberately design relationships between elements so that they reinforce one another?

This is extremely close to the multi-capital logic of RCF.

Connection to a region:
Permaculture is inherently place-based. It encourages observation of:

  • climate
  • land
  • water
  • ecology
  • resources
  • people
  • local needs
  • relationships

That makes it particularly valuable for Regional Resilience Centres.

One could say:

Permaculture provides a design language; the Real Capital Framework provides a language for understanding and managing the stocks and capacities that design must work with.

RCF connection: ★★★★★

5. Howard T. Odum — ecological systems and ecological development/maturity

Howard T. Odum’s work on ecological systems, development and the relationship between energy flows and ecosystem organisation is seminal.

Odum is particularly important because he encourages us to see ecosystems not simply as collections of species but as organised systems of energy, material flows, structure and function.

For RCF, this is a very important corrective to simplistic natural-capital accounting.

Natural capital is not merely a stock of “resources.” Its value lies in the capacity of organised living systems to perform functions.

In this paper he lays out what ecosystem maturity is:

Key Concepts of Ecological Maturity

  • Community Energetics: Early developmental stages prioritize rapid growth and high production (P/R > 1), while mature ecosystems shift toward a steady state where gross production equals community respiration (P/R = 1). [1]
  • Nutrient Cycling: Young systems have open, linear nutrient paths, whereas mature ecosystems develop closed, highly retentive mineral and biochemical cycles. [1]
  • Species and Spatial Diversity: Diversity increases as systems mature, moving from generalist pioneer species to specialized, complex niches with high structural stratification. [1]
  • Homeostasis and Stability: Mature systems maximize biomass and symbiotic organization per unit of available energy, providing strong resistance and resilience against environmental disturbances. [1]

Connection to a region:
This is especially relevant where a resilience centre is interested in:

  • forest condition
  • watershed function
  • soil fertility
  • agricultural landscapes
  • biodiversity
  • ecological restoration

The condition of the regional ecosystem determines the future capacity of the region to provide services.

RCF connection: ★★★★★

6. Quality Is Free — Philip B. Crosby

Correct title: Quality Is Free: The Art of Making Quality Certain.

This may initially look like an unusual book in a resilience reading list, but I think it is important.

Crosby’s central insight is that quality should not be seen as an expensive addition. Poor quality itself produces costs—failure, waste, rework and loss.

The connection to RCF is powerful:

Maintaining capital is not merely a cost. Allowing capital to deteriorate creates costs.

The same principle applies to:

  • bridges
  • buildings
  • forests
  • soils
  • water systems
  • skills
  • institutions

Connection to a region:
A region that systematically allows its capital to deteriorate is accumulating hidden liabilities.

This is directly relevant to the thinking about capital maturity gaps.

RCF connection: ★★★★☆

7. Out of the Crisis — W. Edwards Deming

And: The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education — W. Edwards Deming

Deming is perhaps even more important to RCF than Crosby.

His work is based on the proposition that organisations must understand themselves as systems. He argues against managing through isolated targets and instead emphasises understanding variation, cooperation, learning and the behaviour of the whole system.

This is extraordinarily relevant to regional resilience.

A municipality can meet individual targets while the overall region becomes less resilient.

A company can become more efficient while natural capital deteriorates.

A government department can succeed according to its KPIs while transferring costs to another part of society.

Deming helps explain why silo management fails.

Connection to a region:
Deming’s systems approach provides an intellectual bridge between RCF and management practice.

It asks:

How do we organise institutions so that they can actually manage the system they depend upon?

This is highly relevant to your interest in combining RCF with ISO 55001 and asset management.

RCF connection: ★★★★★

8. Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist — Kate Raworth

This is probably the most immediately recognisable contemporary economic companion to the RCF.

Raworth’s doughnut establishes two boundaries:

  • a social foundation, below which people suffer deprivation;
  • an ecological ceiling, beyond which human activity damages Earth systems.

The RCF offers something that can complement this very well.

The Doughnut tells us, broadly:

Where humanity needs to be.

RCF asks:

What real stocks and capacities must exist—and be managed—to enable a society or region to remain there?

Connection to a region:
This is where the connection becomes particularly powerful.

A regional version might ask:

  • Does everyone have access to essential provisioning?
  • What real capital makes this possible?
  • What maturity gaps exist?
  • Is the region’s way of meeting needs contributing to ecological overshoot?

RCF connection: ★★★★★

9. Polly Higgins Eradicating Ecocide: Laws and Governance to Prevent the Destruction of Our Planet — Polly Higgins

Alternatively, her later book:

Earth Is Our Business: Changing the Rules of the Game

Higgins is particularly relevant to thinking about the legal status of nature as a real asset.

Her central question is essentially:

Why is it legally possible for economic actors to benefit from the destruction of the ecological systems upon which everyone depends?

This fits extremely well with RCF.

If ecosystems are real capital, then their destruction is not simply an unfortunate environmental side effect. It is a form of capital degradation.

Connection to a region:
For a regional resilience centre, this raises practical questions:

  • Who has responsibility for maintaining common natural capital?
  • Who bears the cost of degradation?
  • How are restoration liabilities recognised?
  • How should property rights relate to the condition of ecosystems?

This connects directly with the work on favourable conservation status, ecological liabilities and restoration.

RCF connection: ★★★★★

10. Steve Keen — The New Economics

Keen’s relevance to the RCF is clear. His work challenges conventional economic models that treat the financial system as largely separate from physical production and real-world dynamics. He emphasises money, debt, banking and accounting as active parts of the economy.

This is especially relevant to one of the central arguments:

Financial capital is not the same thing as real capital.

Money can be created.

Financial claims can expand.

Debt can rise.

But none of these things automatically creates:

  • fertile soil
  • clean water
  • healthy people
  • skilled workers
  • functioning infrastructure
  • biodiversity
  • social trust

Connection to a region:
A region may contain financially successful companies while its real capital deteriorates.

This is precisely the point we want to make to economists:

Corporate prosperity within a territory does not necessarily mean that the territory itself is thriving.

Keen therefore helps explain the distinction between financial representation and real productive capacity.

RCF connection: ★★★★★

11. Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger — Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett

Bloomsbury book page

Human Capital and Social Capital are as important to RCF as Natural and Built Capital.

Wilkinson and Pickett’s central argument is that the distribution of resources within a society matters profoundly to social outcomes. Their work challenges the assumption that aggregate wealth alone tells us whether a society is successful; the character of the society—including inequality—matters.

Why it matters for RCF

The Real Capital Framework can potentially make an important distinction between:

The quantity of capital in a region

and

The condition and distribution of the capacities that capital creates.

A region might have:

  • wealthy companies;
  • high-value property;
  • highly educated people;
  • substantial infrastructure;

while still having large parts of the population excluded from the capabilities necessary to thrive.

The Spirit Level therefore helps guard against an excessively aggregate understanding of Human and Social Capital.

Specific connection to the region

For a Regional Resilience Centre, this raises important questions:

  • Who actually benefits from the region’s capital?
  • Are opportunities to develop human capability widely available?
  • Does inequality weaken trust and cooperation?
  • Are parts of the population disconnected from employment, institutions or community life?
  • Can the region mobilise its population during disturbance?

This is particularly important because social resilience depends upon more than the existence of institutions—it depends upon the capacity of people to participate in them.

I would therefore regard The Spirit Level as a major book for understanding the human and social dimension of regional resilience.

RCF connection: ★★★★★

12. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action — Elinor Ostrom

Ostrom addresses a fundamental problem:

How can people successfully manage resources that many people depend upon?

This is almost exactly the problem that a regional interpretation of RCF must solve.

Natural capital frequently consists of shared or interconnected systems:

  • watersheds;
  • forests;
  • fisheries;
  • biodiversity;
  • groundwater;
  • landscapes.

But there are also shared forms of:

  • built capital;
  • social infrastructure;
  • knowledge;
  • institutions.

The question is not simply:

“Who owns the asset?”

It is:

Who has an interest in its condition, who affects it, who depends upon it, and how can collective rules maintain it?

Why it matters for RCF

Ostrom provides something that RCF needs: a theory of governance of common assets.

RCF can identify:

What capital exists?

It can assess:

What condition is it in?

It can identify:

What maturity gap exists?

But Ostrom helps address:

How do people organise themselves to manage the asset?

That is an essential missing link between diagnosis and action.

Specific connection to the region

This may be especially important for the Regional Resilience Centre.

A region contains assets that no single organisation controls but upon which everyone depends.

For example:

A river system may cross municipal boundaries.

Forest management may involve thousands of landowners.

Biodiversity may depend on decisions made by farmers, municipalities, companies and citizens.

Transport systems involve public and private organisations.

The resilience centre could therefore become a place where collective-action problems are made visible and addressed.

Ostrom would support an important RCF principle:

The management of regional capital cannot always be assigned to one owner. It often requires institutions capable of coordinating multiple actors with different interests.

RCF connection: ★★★★★

13. The Logic of Sufficiency — Thomas Princen

MIT Press book page.

Princen asks a deceptively simple question:

When is enough enough?

His argument challenges the dominant assumption that efficiency and increased production are always desirable. Instead, he explores the principle of sufficiency: organising society around meeting needs and maintaining ecological integrity rather than assuming that more is always better.

Why it matters for RCF

This is very close to the question of capital maturity.

The objective of RCF does not necessarily have to be:

maximise every form of capital.

Instead, it can be:

Develop and maintain sufficient mature capital to enable people to thrive within ecological limits.

That is a very important distinction.

A region does not necessarily need:

  • maximum consumption;
  • maximum infrastructure;
  • maximum industrial throughput;
  • maximum extraction.

It needs sufficient capability.

This may become one of the most important philosophical foundations of the framework.

Specific connection to the region

A regional application might ask:

How much housing is sufficient—and of what quality?

How much energy capacity is sufficient?

How much transport infrastructure is sufficient?

What level of food provisioning capability is necessary?

What ecological condition is necessary to maintain regional life-support systems?

This leads naturally to the idea of maturity thresholds.

For example:

  • below a threshold, capital is insufficient;
  • above a threshold, needs are reliably met;
  • beyond some point, further expansion may produce little additional benefit or even damage other capital.

That is an extremely useful intellectual basis for regional planning.

RCF connection: ★★★★★

14. Physical Asset Management: With an Introduction to the ISO 55000 Series of Standards — Nicholas Anthony John Hastings

Springer book page

If I were choosing one book specifically to introduce serious asset-management practice into the reading list, this would probably be my choice.

Hastings presents asset management systematically across the asset life cycle, from identifying needs and capability gaps through planning, maintenance, evaluation, renewal and disposal, explicitly relating the discussion to the ISO 55000 family of standards.

Why it matters for RCF

This is perhaps the book that most directly connects to the practical question you have been developing:

Once we recognise something as real capital, how do we actually manage it?

RCF provides the broader ontology.

It asks:

What forms of real capital does society depend upon?

Asset management provides a management discipline for asking:

What assets do we have?

What function do they perform?

What condition are they in?

What level of performance is required?

What are the risks of failure?

What interventions are required?

When should we maintain, renew, replace or dispose of them?

How do these decisions contribute to organisational objectives?

That is an exceptionally good fit with your emerging work.

Specific connection to the region

The important conceptual leap we are making is that the same basic discipline could eventually be extended beyond conventional organisational assets.

A Regional Resilience Centre could progressively develop:

Regional objective
↓
Required capabilities
↓
Real capital dependencies
↓
Identified assets and systems
↓
Condition and maturity
↓
Gaps and risks
↓
Interventions
↓
Monitoring

That is very close to the line of sight we have repeatedly identified as missing from much regional and public-sector planning.

The challenge—and the intellectual opportunity—is to investigate how far asset-management logic can be extended from organisational physical assets towards the much wider universe of regional real capital.

RCF connection: ★★★★★

An alternative: Asset Management Excellence

There is also:

Asset Management Excellence: Optimizing Equipment Life-Cycle Decisions — John D. Campbell, Andrew K. S. Jardine, Joel McGlynn and Don M. Barry

CRC Press book page

This is a substantial modern work on life-cycle asset-management decisions and the relationship between asset management, maintenance and organisational performance. The third edition was published in 2024.

I would see the distinction like this:

BookBest use in the RCF reading list
Hastings – Physical Asset ManagementBest bridge between RCF and ISO 55000
Campbell et al. – Asset Management ExcellenceBest deeper treatment of life-cycle and operational asset management

15. Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth — William E. Rees and Mathis Wackernagel

The basic idea of the Ecological Footprint is to ask:

How much biologically productive land and water area is required to support a population’s consumption and absorb certain wastes?

That connects almost perfectly to Catton’s concern with carrying capacity.

Catton → Rees

The relationship can be expressed very simply:

Carrying capacity asks: How much population and activity can the available ecological system support?

Overshoot asks: What happens when demand exceeds that capacity?

The Ecological Footprint asks: How large is the ecological demand associated with a population or economy?

This makes Rees’s work an important bridge between ecological theory and practical assessment.

Why this is particularly important for RCF

I think Rees reinforces one of the most important propositions emerging in thw framework:

A region’s apparent economic activity does not necessarily reveal the real capital upon which that activity depends.

A wealthy city or region may appear to occupy a relatively small geographical area, but its population and industries may depend upon:

  • agricultural land elsewhere;
  • forests elsewhere;
  • mines elsewhere;
  • fisheries elsewhere;
  • water systems elsewhere;
  • energy infrastructure elsewhere;
  • ecological capacity elsewhere to absorb waste and emissions.

The Ecological Footprint therefore makes hidden dependencies visible.

This is extremely relevant to the RCF idea of a regional assessment.

A region is not simply the physical territory inside its administrative boundary.

It is embedded in—and dependent upon—a much larger system of real capital.

The connection to your regional model is particularly interesting

Imagine assessing a region using RCF.

You might begin by identifying its:

Natural Capital

  • forests
  • soils
  • water
  • biodiversity
  • mineral resources

Built Capital

  • buildings
  • roads
  • energy systems
  • water infrastructure

Human Capital

  • health
  • skills
  • knowledge
  • capabilities

Social Capital

  • institutions
  • associations
  • trust
  • networks

Rees then introduces an important additional question:

How much capital outside the region is required to maintain life and economic activity inside the region?

That question could become a very important part of a Regional Resilience Assessment.

This connects particularly well with resilience

A region that depends heavily upon external capital flows may be prosperous but potentially vulnerable.

For example, a region may import:

  • most of its food;
  • most of its energy;
  • critical materials;
  • manufactured goods;
  • fertilisers;
  • medicines.

That is not necessarily bad. No region can be completely self-sufficient.

But from a resilience perspective, the centre needs to understand:

What is the dependency?

How critical is it?

How concentrated is the supply?

What happens if it is interrupted?

What local or alternative capability exists?

This gives us a fascinating connection between Ecological Footprint and your Robustness Matrix.

The footprint asks:

What ecological capacity does our way of life require?

The Robustness Matrix could ask:

How robust is our ability to secure the real capital and provisioning upon which that way of life depends?

Together, they begin to map both:

Ecological dependency
and
resilience dependency.

There is also an important distinction between Rees and Catton

They reinforce one another, but they are not saying precisely the same thing.

ThinkerMain contribution
CattonHuman societies can enter overshoot relative to carrying capacity
ReesHuman demand can be expressed relative to ecological productive capacity
Meadows et al.Stocks, flows and feedback can produce overshoot and collapse dynamics
Rockström et al.Earth-system processes have boundaries beyond which risks increase

Together these give four different perspectives on essentially the same underlying problem:

Human demands must ultimately be compatible with the capacity and stability of the systems that support them.

That, I think, is one of the deepest foundations for the Real Capital Framework.

A very interesting RCF interpretation

You might eventually express the relationship like this:

1. Real Capital

What stocks and capacities exist?

↓

2. Provisioning

What human needs can these stocks and capacities support?

↓

3. Demand

What claims are humans making upon those capacities?

↓

4. Overshoot

Are demands exceeding the capacity for regeneration, renewal or replacement?

↓

5. Resilience

How robustly can provisioning continue when the system is disturbed?

↓

6. Asset Management

What interventions are required to maintain or restore the necessary stocks and capacities?

That is a remarkably coherent architecture.

16. Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change — William R. Catton Jr.

It was published by the University of Illinois Press, and the ISBN in the edition is 0252009886.

University of Illinois Press edition

Why it matters for the Real Capital Framework

Catton’s central importance is that he brings carrying capacity and overshoot directly into the understanding of human society.

The basic insight is profoundly relevant to RCF:

A population can temporarily consume or depend upon more than the regenerative and supporting capacity of its environment can sustain indefinitely.

In other words, apparent prosperity can be based upon the depletion of underlying real capital.

This is where I think Overshoot is particularly valuable.

A conventional economic account might see:

  • rising production;
  • rising incomes;
  • expanding consumption;
  • new infrastructure;
  • economic growth.

Catton asks a prior question:

What underlying ecological capacity is making this possible, and is that capacity being maintained or depleted?

That is almost a canonical RCF question.

The Real Capital Framework can therefore interpret overshoot as something like:

The condition in which current provisioning depends upon the degradation, depletion or overuse of real capital faster than that capital can be regenerated, restored or replaced.

That formulation applies not only to natural resources in the narrow sense, but potentially to the wider RCF idea of capital maturity.

For example, a society can temporarily maintain its way of life by running down:

  • soils;
  • forests;
  • groundwater;
  • biodiversity;
  • infrastructure;
  • human health;
  • public services;
  • institutional capacity.

The outputs may remain high for some time while the capital base is deteriorating.

That is precisely the distinction between outputs and capital maturity that is becoming so central to RCF.

Specific connection to the region

I think this is where Overshoot becomes particularly powerful for a Regional Resilience Centre.

A region could appear prosperous while being in various forms of overshoot.

For example:

Natural Capital overshoot

The region may:

  • harvest forests faster than ecological functions recover;
  • degrade soils while maintaining agricultural output;
  • extract groundwater faster than it is replenished;
  • reduce biodiversity while maintaining short-term production.

Built Capital overshoot

A region may continue providing services by:

  • deferring maintenance;
  • consuming infrastructure faster than it is renewed;
  • accumulating a maintenance backlog.

The roads, bridges and buildings are still there—until suddenly they are not capable of performing their required function.

Human Capital overshoot

A health or care system might maintain current output by:

  • overworking staff;
  • exhausting professionals;
  • failing to invest in skills and renewal.

The service appears to be functioning, but the underlying capacity is being consumed.

Social Capital overshoot

A community might cope with increasing demands by relying upon:

  • voluntary effort;
  • informal care;
  • trust;
  • community solidarity.

But these too can be exhausted if continually drawn upon without renewal.

This suggests a particularly interesting extension of Catton’s idea:

Regional overshoot occurs when the demands placed upon the region’s real capital exceed the rate at which that capital can be maintained, regenerated, renewed or replaced.

I think that is potentially a very important RCF concept.

Why Overshoot is not simply a duplicate of The Limits to Growth

The two belong together, but they perform different functions in the reading architecture.

The Limits to Growth

asks:

How do interacting global stocks and flows behave within a finite system?

It gives us a systems model of limits and dynamic interaction.

Catton’s Overshoot

asks:

What happens when human society expands beyond carrying capacity and mistakes temporary abundance for permanent capability?

It provides a more ecological and sociological account of the consequences.

Planetary Boundaries

asks:

What are the critical Earth-system boundaries within which humanity should remain?

It provides a contemporary scientific framework for defining the safe operating space.

Together they form an extremely strong intellectual sequence:

Limits → Carrying Capacity → Overshoot → Safe Operating Space

And I think RCF then adds:

What real capital must be managed so that society can remain within that space while meeting human needs?

That makes Catton a very natural member of the canonical reading list.

There is another connection that I think you will particularly like

We suggest we should identify:

  • the asset;
  • its required function;
  • its current condition;
  • its desired condition;
  • the gap;
  • the intervention required.

Catton gives us an important warning about the opposite situation.

A society can have a large amount of apparent current provisioning while having an unrecognised liability against the future.

In RCF terms, one might express this as:

Current output can conceal capital depletion.

That may be one of the most useful principles in the entire framework.

GDP, turnover, employment and production can all be high while:

Natural Capital ↓
Built Capital ↓
Human Capital ↓
Social Capital ↓

The region may look successful in conventional statistics precisely while becoming less capable of sustaining that success.

This connects very strongly with the point you have previously wanted to make to economists: the presence of successful companies in a region does not necessarily mean that the region itself is thriving or becoming more resilient.

I would give Catton a ★★★★★ RCF connection and place him among the foundational works rather than as an optional supplementary reading.

Overshoot gives you a concept that could become explicitly useful in the Regional Resilience Centre’s diagnostic work: a regional overshoot assessment. That would ask not merely whether a region is performing well today, but whether today’s provisioning is being achieved by drawing down the real capital upon which tomorrow’s provisioning depends.

17. Appreciative Inquiry: A Positive Revolution in Change — David L. Cooperrider and Diana Whitney.

Why it matters for the Real Capital Framework

Appreciative Inquiry begins from a different question from much conventional planning and problem-solving.

Instead of beginning with:

What is wrong?

What is broken?

What is the problem?

it asks:

What is working?

What do we value?

What strengths already exist?

What gives life to this system when it is at its best?

This fits remarkably well with the attitude you describe in RCF:

See what you have → understand what it is and how it works → appreciate its value → care for it → use it wisely.

  1. Capital can exist but be unequally accessible — The Spirit Level.
  2. Capital can be shared without having an effective single owner — Governing the Commons.
  3. Capital can be expanded beyond what is necessary or beneficial — The Logic of Sufficiency.
  4. Once we know what matters, how do we systematically manage it?

Systems → Real Stocks → Ecological Limits → Human Capability → Collective Governance → Sufficiency → Asset Management → Regional Resilience.

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