In my opinion, this is one of the most important things we can do; as individuals (investing in yourself), as families, neighborhoods, communities, cities... all the way up to a national and even global level.
I like to think of social capital in my own way as the collective qualities of people in a community, as a result of the ability to have their basic needs met and access quality care - ultimately enabling them to prosper and propel their community and economy forward in a positive way. But "social capital" doesn't come from nothing; it takes time to establish and there are essential components that build social capital.
Meeting basic needs (housing, food, shelter, etc., refer to an older post) but also creating equal and plentiful (and free) opportunities for quality healthcare and education, are just some key ingredients that build social capital. I also believe you can take it a step further and say that in order to maximize social capital, there needs to be a connecting and trusting relationship between the people and the governing system. So in difficult times or times of crisis, people feel secure and trust that their basic needs will be met by the system that's designed to support them - this encourages a level of comfort that allow people to take risks and those circumstances help churn out possibilities for a better society.
When people do not have good access to, for example, clean drinking water, many other important aspects of their life come to a pause because they're forced to revert back to using some of our most basic human instincts to simple get by. Staying alive and healthy, feeling secure and free from danger will certainly become before more skillful achievements. So, social capital cannot be improved when people and communities are stagnant in this tier, instead it will dumb down communities. And on larger scales, whether we are aware of it or not, these affects will be felt across society, furthering inequality.
These ideas were sparked by an article I read by AECOM's Chief Sustainability Officer, mentioning the 3 types of capital and the current challenges we face with integrating them. The other forms of capital, natural capital (Earth's resources) and financial capital, along with social capital, are essential to each of our lives every single day. Author Gary Lawrence makes the most important point:
"In stark contrast [to natural and financial capital,] the only natural resource that actually improves through use rather than being diminished is human capital. The inventiveness, intellectual ingenuity and diversity of our species are unique to Homo sapiens as far as we know. When the human mind is given the space to be curious and the opportunity to explore, great things become possible. This does not happen when the mind is occupied with feeding and sheltering the human body, scraping a subsistence living from day to day."Sometimes it's easy to get caught up in managing and protecting natural and financial capital when it's really the human aspect that we need to absolutely secure. Because in order to effectively manage our resources and external challenges, we need to have the knowledge base built and capacity to do so intelligently, and of course always with future generations in mind.
