---
title: ensure the asset to ensure the flows
canonical_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/ensure-the-asset-to-ensure-the-flows
markdown_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/ensure-the-asset-to-ensure-the-flows.md
subtitle: "the asset contains the stocks, the stocks yield the flows, and the people who depend on the flows fund the asset"
category: ensurance
---

# ensure the asset to ensure the flows

*the asset contains the stocks, the stocks yield the flows, and the people who depend on the flows fund the asset*

**Natural asset ensurance** is the funding of a titled living place so that what it does every year keeps happening. The asset is the titled place: a parcel, an easement, an ecological polygon with a boundary and an owner. The stocks are the ecosystems it contains. The flows are their work: held water, held soil, a cooler street, a pollinated field, a blunted surge. Nobody can hold title to a flow. The only way to keep a flow is to keep the stock that makes it, and the only way to hold the stock is through the asset that contains it. So the people who depend on the flows fund the asset, the asset is kept whole, and the flows keep coming. Ensure the asset to ensure the flows.

The Demille wetland in Florida, 83 acres of forested wetland, is the place posts 1 and 6 of this series worked on. The asset is the titled land. The stock inside it is a forested wetland, which the fifteen file under Inland Wetlands. The flows are what the wetland does for the land around it in a year, valued at $1,449,703, our estimate, all of it public-goods value that no one is paid for; its income is $0. RealValue makes that flow legible in dollars beside what the asset costs to hold. The wetland does its work whether or not anyone funds it. [Ensurance](/?from=guide) funds the asset. It is not the flow.

:::johnson
**fund the flows you depend on, and the money lands on the asset that makes them.** — Four nouns, one loop. The asset contains the stocks, the stocks make the flows, natural capital is the account of both, and the account exists so the asset can be kept.

[what a natural asset actually is →](/guide/what-a-natural-asset-actually-is?from=guide)
:::

## four nouns, in order

| Noun | What it is | Who can hold it |
|---|---|---|
| Natural asset | A real asset with a title and a boundary: a parcel, a conservation easement, an ecological polygon | An owner, a land trust, a conservation entity, the protocol itself |
| Stock | A living system the asset contains, one or more of the fifteen ecosystem types | Nobody holds a stock directly; it is held through the asset |
| Flow | What a stock does every year, one or more of the nineteen services | Nobody holds a flow; it crosses the boundary and lands on whoever is downstream, downwind, next door |
| Natural capital | The standing system and its account: what the asset contains and what it makes, in one ledger | It is held through the asset; the ledger is how finance reads it |

The manual puts the nesting in one sentence: natural capital is in, under, on and flows across natural assets. The asset is the vessel. The stocks live within it. The flows move through it and out of it. The account describes all three. [What a natural asset actually is](/guide/what-a-natural-asset-actually-is?from=guide) and [a natural asset is not natural capital](/guide/a-natural-asset-is-not-natural-capital?from=guide) hold the two definitions; this post is about why the order matters for money.

## why you cannot ensure a flow

A flow has no title. Water that leaves a wetland belongs to no one by the time it would reach a downstream intake; a flood a wetland holds never reaches the houses that would have filed the claim. You cannot write an instrument on the flow itself, because there is nothing to hold and no one to hold it. That is the whole reason flows are undervalued, and the reason every market that has priced them has needed a unit, a credit or a receipt to stand in for the flow.

A stock has no title either. Inland Wetlands is a type, not a place. Fifteen stocks and nineteen flows describe what is there and what it does; they do not say whose it is.

The asset does. A parcel has a deed, a boundary, a price and an owner, and the law already knows how to hold it, encumber it, protect it and pass it on. Land trusts and conservation easements have been doing exactly that for decades, and the protocol builds on them rather than around them. That is why the protocol's core instrument is written on the asset. A policy is a certificate of ensurance for a natural asset: it requires a cooperating legal titleholder, it is written with the owner, its price is set on the asset's cost basis, and one payment supports the whole ecosystem and all of its services as one instrument. [The natural asset policy is where the promise meets the deed](/guide/the-natural-asset-policy-is-where-the-promise-meets-the-deed?from=guide) walks that instrument. Where there is no title, a line can still name a stock or a flow and give it a protocol account, but a line has no entrust path of its own; a place with a cooperating owner can graduate from a line to a policy.

## the loop

Start where the dependency is. A utility depends on the filtration a forest does above its intake. A county depends on the flood storage a wetland does above its roads. A grower depends on the pollination a hedgerow does beside the field. None of them owns the place. All of them already pay for its absence, in treatment, in repairs, in yield lost. [Who pays for nature](/guide/who-pays-for-nature?from=guide) is about finding those payors; this post is about what their money does when it arrives.

It lands on the asset. Not on the flow, which cannot receive it, and not on the stock, which has no title, but on the titled place that contains the stock and makes the flow. The protocol pays as a usufruct payor would: for the fruits, the flows, not for possession. The owner keeps title. The payment funds the asset's path to entrust: the land free of tenant, rent, debt and claim, with its permanence held by the recorded protective right the property documents supply.

Then the flows keep coming. An asset at entrust has had its cost taken out of the picture, so every dollar that arrives afterward can go to the work that keeps its stocks in condition, and condition is what the flows depend on. [The same acre is not the same acre](/guide/the-same-acre-is-not-the-same-acre?from=guide) is about that multiplier. The payors who start the loop are the ones who depend on the flows, so each step is in someone's interest. That does not make the payors appear on their own; a flow that reaches everyone is one that everyone can wait for someone else to pay for, which is the free-rider problem, and finding the payors who will not wait is most of the work.

Fund the flows, keep the asset, keep the flows. That is the sentence. The two-payor model in the manual is the same loop with the parties named: those who depend on the flows fund the value, and those who finance real assets fund the cost, and the two meet on the asset.

## Demille, around the loop

| Step | On the Demille wetland |
|---|---|
| The asset | 83 acres of titled forested wetland; project cost $267,500; entrust value $294,250 |
| The stock | A forested wetland, filed under Inland Wetlands |
| The flows | Valued at $1,449,703 a year, our estimate; income $0; all of it public-goods value no one is paid for |
| The account | Natural cap rate 493% on the entrust value, about 542% on the project cost; the basis travels with the rate |
| The loop, as designed | Those who depend on the flood storage, the filtration and the habitat would fund the asset toward entrust; the asset kept whole keeps doing the work they fund |

The ratio in that table is not a return to anyone. It is the comparison that says a year of this place's work has been valued at nearly five times its entrust value. [Flows over stocks](/guide/flows-over-stocks?from=guide) builds the number and says what it is for. Here it does one job: it shows why the payors on the far side of the boundary have a reason to fund an asset they will never own.

## why the name

Insurance pays after the flow has failed: the claim, the repair, the loss adjusted. It is written on the thing that was damaged, which is usually the building downstream, and what it pays rarely reaches the wetland that would have held the flood. Natural asset ensurance is written on the wetland. It funds the asset before the flow fails, so that it does not. [Insurance to ensurance](/manual/insurance-to-ensurance?from=guide) in the manual carries the contrast; the point here is only the name. Ecosystem service ensurance would be the wrong name, because a service cannot be held. Natural capital ensurance would be the wrong name, because the account cannot be kept whole apart from the asset it describes. The asset is the only noun in the four that can be titled, held, funded and brought to entrust. So the asset is what is ensured, and the flows are why.

## frequently asked questions

### what is natural asset ensurance?

The funding of a titled living place, a parcel, an easement or an ecological polygon, so that the ecosystem services it provides keep being provided. The people and institutions that depend on those services fund the asset; the asset is kept whole and brought toward entrust; the services continue. The asset is what is ensured, and the flows are why.

### what is the difference between a natural asset and natural capital?

A natural asset is the real thing with a title and a boundary. Natural capital is the standing living system the asset contains and the account of what it makes, its stocks and its flows. You cannot hold natural capital apart from the asset; you hold the asset and keep its account. [What natural capital actually is](/guide/what-natural-capital-actually-is?from=guide) carries the accounting reading.

### why fund the asset instead of paying for the ecosystem service directly?

Because a service has no title and cannot be held; a payment for it has to be a payment to whoever controls the place that makes it. Funding the asset puts the money on the only thing that can be kept whole, and keeps the whole bundle of services at once rather than the one a unit or a credit was written for.

## next

Back to the beginning of the account: [the stocks and flows of natural capital](/guide/the-stocks-and-flows-of-natural-capital?from=guide).

If you hold or finance land and want the asset read this way, [investors](/solutions/investors?from=guide&topic=stocks-and-flows) shows how the account is used. If you depend on a flow from a place you do not own and can name it, [tell us which](/contact?from=guide&topic=stocks-and-flows).

## sources

[Natural assets, the ensurance manual](/manual/natural-assets?from=guide) — natural capital in, under, on and flows across natural assets; the four conditions; real assets to natural assets.

[Natural capital, the ensurance manual](/manual/natural-capital?from=guide) — the stocks, the flows, the natural cap rate, the two-payor model and the Demille example.

[Certificates, the ensurance manual](/manual/certificates?from=guide) — policies on titled natural assets and lines without title.

[Ensurance, the ensurance manual](/manual/ensurance?from=guide) — unensured, ensured and entrust: ensured funds the asset's cost to reach entrust; entrust funds ongoing stewardship.

[BASIN Field Manual, Natural Asset Ensurance](https://docs.basin.global/ensurance/natural-asset-ensurance) — the original statement of ensuring the asset.

[BASIN Field Manual, STOCKS Values](https://docs.basin.global/realvalue/the-realvalue-of-natural-capital/realvalues/stocks-values) — the stock as the real asset's value from a declared perspective.

## the series

1. [the stocks and flows of natural capital](/guide/the-stocks-and-flows-of-natural-capital?from=guide) (read first)
2. [every acre is one of fifteen things](/guide/every-acre-is-one-of-fifteen-things?from=guide)
3. [nineteen things a place does](/guide/nineteen-things-a-place-does?from=guide)
4. [where the dollar per acre comes from](/guide/where-the-dollar-per-acre-comes-from?from=guide)
5. [the same acre is not the same acre](/guide/the-same-acre-is-not-the-same-acre?from=guide)
6. [flows over stocks](/guide/flows-over-stocks?from=guide)
7. [ensure the asset to ensure the flows](/guide/ensure-the-asset-to-ensure-the-flows?from=guide)