Nature conservation as if people mattered

SummaryThe restoration of natural capital is arguably one of the most radical ideas to emerge in recent years as it links two imperatives whose exponents have been at loggerheads for decades. These are the need to protect biodiversity and conserve natural resources as espoused by conservationists and environmentalists, and the demand for natural resources as dictated by economists and society at large, at local, regional, national and international scales. We need to work together, or even ‘leap together’, across traditional disciplinary frontiers or polemical stances, in order to find innovative solutions that counter the prevailing ideological divide separating economics and ecology. We close this special issue with a proposition of five pillars and three principal tasks for sustainable living, including conservation and restoration.