Making Nature Count: Reflections on the Dasgupta Review

Earth’s biodiversity is the ultimate engine of local and global economies and compromising the renewability of our natural resources will ultimately halt economic growth. Despite this, humankind has continued to exploit natural resources such as fisheries and forests at highly unsustainable rates in the pursuit of flawed development paradigms and simplistic metrics such as gross domestic product (GDP). This has already led to the loss of natural habitats and the decline and extinction of species as well as consequences such as an increase in zoonotic pandemics. The Economics of Biodiversity, a recent report by Sir Partha Dasgupta, addresses how the failure of our current institutions has brought us to where we stand and suggests ways by which we may reform our economic thought to mitigate the impacts on biodiversity. The report identifies important first steps: changing the way we measure economic “success”, ensuring that the renewal of natural resources keeps supply higher than demand, and restructuring institutional frameworks. These are necessary but potentially insufficient measures—tenure over land and water is likely to be crucial in addressing the challenges of the future. Preserving ecological integrity to allow biodiversity to persist in the face of climate change is essential.