Sustainability: A Barrier to Tourism Development? - Tourism and Development: Concepts and Issues - page 447

Natural Capital is any stock or flow of energy and material that pro-
duces goods and services. It includes:
• Resources - renewable and non-renewable materials
• Sinks - that absorb, neutralise or recycle wastes
• Processes - such as climate regulation
Human Capital consists of people's health, knowledge, skills and moti-
vation. All these things are needed for productive work.
Social Capital concerns the institutions that help us maintain and
develop human capital in partnership with others; e.g. families, commu-
nities, businesses, trade unions, schools and voluntary organisations.
Manufactured Capital comprises material goods or fixed assets which
contribute to the production process rather than being the output itself
- e.g. tools, machines and buildings.
Financial Capital plays an important role in our economy, enabling the
other types of capital to be owned and traded. But unlike the other
types, it has no real value itself but is representative of natural, human,
social or manufactured capital; e.g. shares, bonds or banknotes.

Figure 15.4 The fi ve capitals
Source: Forum for the Future (2009).

In both the SLA and the Five Capitals Model, capitals are seen from the
more traditional perspective as assets from which particular benefits can be
derived. It can be similarly argued that all tourism destinations also possess
a variety of capitals which, to varying degrees, have the potential to generate
a flow of benefits to both the destination (or, more specifically, destination
communities) as producers of goods and services and to tourists as consum-
ers of those goods and services. These capitals may then form the basis of an
alternative approach to tourism development. Although the selection and
interpretation of capitals relevant to tourism destinations might appear to be
somewhat arbitrary, the following capitals, listed in Figure 15.4, arguably
reflect the productive assets of any tourism destination (for a more detailed
discussion, see Sharpley, 2009b).

• Socio-cultural capital: in the context of tourism destinations, socio-cultural

capital is used to refer to the structures, sociological institutions, cohe-
sion, adaptability and openness of destination communities and their
cultural characteristics and practices.

• Human capital: human capital refers to the supply and capabilities (knowl-

edge, skills, motivation, innovative/entrepreneurial capacity) of individu-
als to contribute to the production and delivery of touristic services and
experiences.