On Natural Capital The Value of the World Around Us

About this book

'Imagine a football team which measures its success only on the basis of the goals it scores and doesn't count the goals it concedes. That football team could be losing right through without recognizing it...'

For as long as they have existed, our economic models have served us an incomplete picture.

The models and metrics tells us that our economies are healthy because they are growing. However, this doesn't account for the fact that our growth is driven by a resource that we take for free and treat as infinite: nature. For centuries we have been using it as if it were both, but we know now, more than ever, that our demand on the natural world is unsustainable. It's no longer sufficient to only see part of the picture; it's time that our economic models show us the whole thing.

In On Natural Capital, renowned Cambridge economist Sir Partha Dasgupta lays out a seminal and groundbreaking new approach to economics. Challenging everything that has come before, he asks, what if we were to put a value on nature just as we value everything else? An urgent call to transform the focus and structures of global economics, On Natural Capital is a bold and groundbreaking book that could, truly, change everything.

Customer Reviews

Biography

Sir Partha Dasgupta is a Professor of Economics at the University of Cambridge, and a fellow of St John's College, Cambridge. Previously, he taught at the London School of Economics and Stanford University. His research has covered development economics, the economics of technological change, population, social capital and ecological economics. In 2019, he was commissioned by the UK Treasury to write a report, The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review, which was published in 2021 to much acclaim. He was appointed Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire in 2023 for his services to economics and the natural environment.