Growth Is Only Real When Shared With Biodiversity, Says The New Dasgupta Review

“We are embedded in Nature” and “nature is more than a mere economic good”, writes Prof Sir Partha Dasgupta in the new publication commissioned by the UK Treasury.

“Nature nurtures and nourishes us, so we will think of assets as durable entities that not only have use value, but may also have intrinsic worth.”

Dasgupta’s review presents the first comprehensive economic framework of its kind for biodiversity. And possibly the most prestigious one.

Back in 2019, the UK Government commissioned Dasgupta to lead an independent, global review on the economics of biodiversity. After an interim report in April 2020, the study was officially launched on Tuesday at an event hosted by the Royal Society and attended by the Prince of Wales, UK’s prime minister Boris Johnson and David Attenborough.

In a quite revolutionary way, Dasgupta asserts that “the contemporary practice of using Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to judge economic performance is based on a faulty application of economics” and suggests that “GDP growth is, in principle, compatible with sustainable development”. What is incompatible is the exclusion of such an important factor as biodiversity.

“We are all asset managers. Whether as farmers or fishermen, hunters or gatherers, foresters or miners, households or companies, governments or communities, we manage the assets we have access to in line with our motivations, as best as we can. This Review pays close attention to a class of assets we call Nature and studies it in relation to the many other assets in our portfolios.”

The review calls for a radical change of perspective, in which every resource has its right place and the care it deserves. In fact, nature is more powerful than centuries of mistreatment may lead us to think.

Momentum for nature-based solutions has been growing, especially in view of the upcoming COP26, but it hasn’t always been like that. “Nature entered macroeconomic models of growth and development in the 1970s, but in an inessential form,” writes Dasgupta. “We may have increasingly queried the absence of Nature from official conceptions of economic possibilities, but the worry has been left for Sundays. On week-days, our thinking has remained as usual.”

Under our eyes, biodiversity is declining globally at unprecedented rates and will continue to do so due to climate change. As the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) shows, around 1 million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction and the average abundance of native species in most major land-based habitats has fallen by at least 20%, mostly since 1900.

Which is one of the reasons why, Dasgupta argues in his review, we need to start acting now: “Biodiversity loss will in turn have huge implications for climate change: enormous amounts of carbon are locked within animal life and vegetation”.

Commenting the review, Paula Harrison, principal natural capital scientist at the UK Centre for ecology and hydrology, said it “highlights how protecting and enhancing both biodiversity and economic prosperity can be achieved simultaneously by rebalancing our demand for nature’s goods and services with its capacity to supply them.”

Governments and business should then prefer protection over exploitation, and spend money accordingly. Eventually conservation will turn out to be less expensive and restoration.

The good news is that, although global population and consequently demand for food are both growing, “there is space to conserve and restore ecosystem assets”. Less waste, less overconsumption and less meat will be key.

Empowered citizens can play a big role, too. “As citizens, we need to demand and shape the change we seek,” Dasgupta writes. “We can do this, for example, by insisting that financiers invest our money sustainably, that firms disclose environmental conditions along their supply chains (product labelling is a partial method for doing that), and even boycotting products that do not meet standards.”

“Most people would agree that biodiversity is important, but exactly why it is important, beyond an intangible sense, is not always clear,” said Nicola Beaumont, head of Science at Plymouth Marine Laboratory. “It is hoped that this work will ensure biodiversity is taken more seriously in future decision making and as such play a role in reversing its long-time decline.”