The extension of national accounts to cover economic natural assets and their services (incorporated into commodities) is important but cannot deliver a sufficiently complete vision of the interaction of people and nature. For example, an enterprise holding and managing a forest will know and care about trees and timber, but much less about 'non-timber forest values', or forest water regulating functions and micro-climate effects which may be highly important for other sectors of society and for biodiversity. One reason is that the forest is privately managed for private benefits, while the other ecosystem services are mostly public goods. Another reason is that large parts of nature are out of the scope of those 'owned.
