What would it take to rebuild economics around the natural world?

On the natural capital
Partha dasgupta (Witness Books (UK, Out Now); Mariner Books (United States, January 20, 2026))))))

How much would do you cost if the environmental damage caused by the productions were taken into account? What impact would it have on the economy of a country? Can we put a price on the importance of a pleasant life environment – or the biodiversity around us?

In 2021, Partha Dasgupta, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Cambridge, wrote a 610 -page report plunging such questions for the British government. His new book, On natural capital: the value of the world around We are an attempt to expand his call.

The success you think that Dasgupta will depend on your enthusiasm for the relatively dry descriptions of economic concepts, surrounded by larger pieces of more alive writing. Its main argument is that the way we use GDP to determine the success of the economy of a country is completely inadequate. Human invention was the key to increasing the standard of living through history, but, as Dasgupta writes: “Travel savings and capital devices, and not nature economics, were the objective of the entrepreneur.”

This is particularly clear with the last of the efforts of “working and capital savings” of humanity: artificial intelligence. Technological billionaires behind the AIS promise incalculable productivity increases because they become more and more omnipresent. However, the amount of water required to cool the data centers that will execute them is barely mentioned.

In its initial report, Dasgupta wrote that estimates show that between 1992 and 2014, human capital per person – our health, our education and our skills – increased by around 13% worldwide, but natural capital per person has decreased by almost 40%. To remedy this, he pleads for the generalized adoption of “global inclusive wealth per capita”, to take into account nature.

This overview can also be reduced. Take shrimp farms in Vietnam and Bangladesh. DASGUPTA reveals how they can negatively affect the “natural capital” of these countries in a way not reflected in the retail price of the crustacean. The creation of shrimp farms generally means destroying certain mangroves and salt marshes, he writes, thus reducing their ability to store carbon.

About 30% of the diet of these animals comes from the cultivated soybeans in plantations that move tropical forests. DASGUPTA cites case studies he has read to suggest that if their real environmental costs were taken into account, shrimps can have an export price from 15 to 20%. In other words, the richest countries that buy the shrimp get a better deal than they should.

I will not profess any in -depth knowledge or understanding of the economy, but I have general discomfort with the continuation of an economic gain at the cost of major damage to the environment. So what can we do? In too short a chapter, Dasgupta offers ways to enhance nature more. This includes the collection of rent to shipping companies that cross the oceans. This species could finance work to facilitate pressure on ecosystems in the world.

These ideas have an intuitive meaning for me, but where are the details? DASGUPTA addresses the difficulties of making collective agreements and the lack of enthusiasm for a global shipping rent. This is where I wanted to have made a more passionate argument. His ideas are fascinating, but are not presented with the urgency that I believe that the general reader wants.

On the natural capital You will make you reconsider the economy, but I would have liked more feeling. It may be too much to ask such a book, but I worry that people cannot listen to otherwise.

Jason Arunn Murugesu is a writer based in Newcastle on Tyne, in the United Kingdom,

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