On Natural Capital: The Value of the World Around Us

What would it mean if people placed an economic value on nature in the same way they assess other resources, goods, and services, asks Cambridge University economist Dasgupta (The Economics of Biodiversity) in this bold treatise. Unlike produced capital (tangible assets like roads and buildings) and human capital (intangible assets like education and aptitude), natural capital (living organisms but also nonliving resources like water and forests) has historically been left out of economic considerations and treated as free and infinite. The result, Dasgupta writes, is an impoverished biosphere, marked by species extinction (currently at 100–1,000 times “the average extinction rates in the previous several million years”) and depleted ecosystems that can’t sustainably meet demands for their resources. Dasgupta also persuasively shows that the export of natural products from poor countries to wealthier ones, rather than having a positive impact on the former, actually consists of significant wealth transfers from exporting to importing countries. His comprehensive analysis of basic ecology and economics are lucid and accessible, but his conclusion that people need to care about their local communities and preserve biodiversity where they can feels insufficient in the face of the global challenges he identifies. Still, this is an urgent call to transform humanity’s relationship to nature. (Jan.)