This special issue of the journal Environmental Education Research addresses a topical area of importance - human behaviour towards the environment. The book explores the economic metaphor of 'natural capital' in this context arguing that the currently dominant model of sustainable development, underpinned by a particular understanding of this metaphor, is impeding progress towards genuine sustainability, and secondly that it will continue to do so until the metaphor can be reworked in both thought and practice.

This book explores an alternative economic model of natural capital value, based on recent 'real options' thinking which reworks the natural capital idea and provides a framework for articulating two major and closely-related shifts of emphasis.

John Foster is a Research Fellow in the Institute for Environment, Philosophy and Public Policy at the University of Lancaster.,
Stephen Gough is a Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Research in Education and the Environment at the University of Bath.