Content uploaded by Emily McKenzie
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Emily McKenzie on Jul 22, 2021
Content may be subject to copyright.
The Economics of
Biodiversity: The
Dasgupta Review
Abridged Version
The Economics of Biodiversity:
The Dasgupta Review
Abridged Version
February 2021
© Crown copyright 2021
This publication is licensed under the terms of the Open Government
Licence v3.0 except where otherwise stated. To view this licence, visit
nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3.
Where we have identified any third party copyright information you
will need to obtain permission from the copyright holders concerned.
Citation: Dasgupta, P. (2021), The Economics of Biodiversity: The
Dasgupta Review. Abridged Version. (London: HM Treasury).
© Front cover photograph: ©Carlos Pérez Naval
This publication is available at: www.gov.uk/official-documents.
Any enquiries regarding this publication should be sent to us at
public.enquiries@hmtreasury.gov.uk
ISBN 978-1-911680-30-7
PU 3070
CCS1120604514 02/21
1The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
Foreword
We are facing a global crisis. We are totally dependent upon the natural world. It supplies us
with every oxygen-laden breath we take and every mouthful of food we eat. But we are currently
damaging it so profoundly that many of its natural systems are now on the verge of breakdown.
Every other animal living on this planet, of course, is similarly dependent. But in one crucial way,
we are different. We can change not just the numbers, but the very anatomy of the animals and
plants that live around us. We acquired that ability, doubtless almost unconsciously, some ten
thousand years ago, when we had ceased wandering and built settlements for ourselves. It was
then that we started to modify other animals and plants.
At first, doubtless, we did so unintentionally. We collected the kinds of seeds that we wanted
to eat and took them back to our houses. Some doubtless fell to the ground and sprouted
the following season. So over generations, we became farmers. We domesticated animals
in a similar way. We brought back the young of those we had hunted, reared them in our
settlements and ultimately bred them there. Over many generations, this changed both the
bodies and ultimately the characters of the animals on which we depend.
We are now so mechanically ingenious that we are able to destroy a rainforest, the most
species-rich ecosystem that has ever existed, and replace it with plantations of a single species in
order to feed burgeoning human populations on the other side of the world. No single species
in the whole history of life has ever been so successful or so dominant.
Now we are plundering every corner of the world, apparently neither knowing or caring what
the consequences might be. Each nation is doing so within its own territories. Those with lands
bordering the sea fish not only in their offshore waters but in parts of the ocean so far from land
that no single nation can claim them. So now we are stripping every part of both the land and
the sea in order to feed our ever-increasing numbers.
How has the natural world managed to survive this unrelenting ever-increasing onslaught by a
single species? The answer of course, is that many animals have not been able to do so. When
Europeans first arrived in southern Africa they found immense herds of antelope and zebra.
These are now gone and vast cities stand in their stead. In North America, the passenger pigeon
once flourished in such vast flocks that when they migrated, they darkened the skies from
horizon to horizon and took days to pass. So they were hunted without restraint. Today, that
species is extinct. Many others that lived in less dramatic and visible ways simply disappeared
without the knowledge of most people worldwide and were mourned only by a few naturalists.
Nonetheless, in spite of these assaults, the biodiversity of the world is still immense. And
therein lies the strength that has enabled much of its wildlife to survive until now. Economists
understand the wisdom of spreading their investments across a wide range of activities. It
enables them to withstand disasters that may strike any one particular asset. The same is true
in the natural world. If conditions change, either climatically or as a consequence of a new
development in the never-ending competition between species, the ecosystem as a whole is able
to maintain its vigour.
But consider the following facts. Today, we ourselves, together with the livestock we rear for
food, constitute 96% of the mass of all mammals on the planet. Only 4% is everything else –
from elephants to badgers, from moose to monkeys. And 70% of all birds alive at this moment
are poultry – mostly chickens for us to eat. We are destroying biodiversity, the very characteristic
that until recently enabled the natural world to flourish so abundantly. If we continue this
damage, whole ecosystems will collapse. That is now a real risk.
Foreword
2The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
Putting things right will take collaborative action by every nation on earth. It will require
international agreements to change our ways. Each ecosystem has its own vulnerabilities and
requires its own solutions. There has to be a universally shared understanding of how these
systems work, and how those that have been damaged can be brought back to health.
This comprehensive, detailed and immensely important report is grounded in that
understanding. It explains how we have come to create these problems and the actions we must
take to solve them. It then provides a map for navigating a path towards the restoration of our
planet’s biodiversity.
Economics is a discipline that shapes decisions of the utmost consequence, and so matters
to us all. The Dasgupta Review at last puts biodiversity at its core and provides the compass
that we urgently need. In doing so, it shows us how, by bringing economics and ecology
together, we can help save the natural world at what may be the last minute – and in doing so,
save ourselves.
David Attenborough
3The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
Preface
The present monograph is an abridged version of The Dasgupta Review on the Economics of
Biodiversity (the Review) that I prepared at the invitation, in Spring 2019, of the then Chancellor
of the Exchequer of the UK Government.
*
Economics, like I imagine other scientific disciplines, normally moves in incremental steps, and
always without a central guide. Much like practitioners of other disciplines, we economists work
with models of those features of the world we want to study in detail. That involves keeping all
else in the far background. Models are thus parables, some say they are caricatures, which is of
course their point.
Economics is also a quantitative subject. Finance ministers need estimates of tax revenues if they
are to meet intended government expenditure; environment ministers today cannot but ask how
much farmers should be paid to set aside land for ‘greening’ the landscape, and whether fossil-
fuel subsidies should be eliminated; health ministers look to convince cabinet colleagues that
investment in health is good for economic growth; and so on. Which is why economic models
are almost invariably cast in mathematical terms.
That is also why the models that appear in economics journals can appear esoteric, unreal,
and even self-indulgent. Many would argue as well that to model human behaviour formally,
let alone mathematically, is to tarnish the human experience, with all its richness. And yet,
economists in governments, international organisations, and private corporations find those
models and their adaptations essential for collecting and analysing data, forecasting economic
trajectories, evaluating options and designing policy. Perhaps, then, it should be no surprise that
those same models go on to shape the conception we build of our economic possibilities. In
turn, our acceptance of the economic possibilities those models say are open to us encourages
academic economists to refine and develop them further along their tested contours. And that
in turn further contributes to our beliefs about what is achievable in our economic future. The
mutual influence is synergistic.1
That has had at least one unintended and costly consequence. Not so long ago, when the
world was very different from what it is now, the economic questions that needed urgent
response could be studied most productively by excluding Nature from economic models. At
the end of the Second World War, absolute poverty was endemic in much of Africa, Asia, and
Latin America; and Europe needed reconstruction. It was natural to focus on the accumulation
of produced capital (roads, machines, buildings, factories, and ports) and what we today call
human capital (health and education). To introduce Nature, or natural capital, into economic
models would have been to add unnecessary luggage to the exercise.2
1 It will be asked who is represented in the collective ‘we’ and ‘our’ that I am using here. It is not everyone in the world, and
certainly not restricted to those who agree with the claims I am making about the mutual influence of academic economic models
and a general reading of economic possibilities. The group I have in mind is not fixed by designation but through invitation – for
example, people who read this Review – to consider why and how we need to break the cycle and revise the conception we hold of
humanity’s place in the biosphere.
2 The significance of the years immediately following the Second World War for the economics of biodiversity will become clear
below. I am referring to the evolution of economic thinking in the West. However, to the best of my knowledge the economic
models that shaped state policy in the Soviet Union, and the ones developed by prominent academics in Latin America, also did
not include Nature. The terms Nature, natural capital, the natural environment, the biosphere, and the natural world are used
interchangeably.
Preface
4The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
Nature entered macroeconomic models of growth and development in the 1970s, but in an
inessential form.3 The thought was that human ingenuity could overcome Nature’s scarcity over
time, and ultimately (formally, in the limit) allow humanity to be free of Nature’s constraints. But
the practice of building economic models on the backs of those that had most recently been
designed meant that the macroeconomics of growth and development continued to be built
without Nature’s appearance as an essential entity in our economic lives. Historians of science
and technology call that feature of the process of selection ‘path dependence’.4 That may be
why economic and finance ministries and international organisations today graft particular
features of Nature, such as the global climate, onto their models as and when the need arises,
but otherwise continue to assume the biosphere to be external to the human economy. In turn,
the practice continues to influence our conception of economic possibilities for the future. 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.5
The Review is both long and technical; in boxes, annexes, and starred chapters, it is even
mathematical. I knew it would be so even as I began working on it; so I have all along had it in
mind to write a shortened, non-mathematical monograph based on it. But I never expected the
resulting monograph to be an easy read; it could not be, because the economics of biodiversity
is a very hard subject.
My reader is the concerned citizen. She is someone who has watched television documentaries
on the state of the biosphere and has read reports in newspapers and magazines on the
extent to which Earth is being degraded and biodiversity is being lost. What she wants now
is an explanation for how and why we have come to this pass, and she wants to know how
to translate that explanation into recommendations. She is curious to know what sustainable
development should mean; what criteria governments and private companies should use when
choosing investment projects; what rules private investors such as herself should use to compare
alternative asset portfolios; what she should insist be the practices of companies producing the
goods and services she purchases and consumes; whether the social returns on investment in
family planning and reproductive health to meet the unmet needs of millions of the world’s
poorest women are so low that the European Union assigns less than 1% of their international
aid budget to them; and so on. Depending on the context, I call her the ‘social evaluator’, or
the ‘citizen investor’. She recognises that her perspective as a citizen is different from the one
she assumes as she goes about her daily life. And she wants to understand why this is so. She
is perplexed that her economist neighbour insists that markets can eliminate these problems if
only the government would set appropriate taxes, subsidies, and regulations, but that without
sustained economic growth all that humanity has achieved will be lost and poverty will be on
the rise. She feels her neighbour is on a wrong track, but doesn’t know how to argue with
him. My reader is someone willing to work hard with me to understand how to counter her
economist neighbour.
Biodiversity is the diversity of life. We will find that the economics of biodiversity is the
economics of the entire biosphere. So, when developing the subject, we will keep in mind that
we are embedded in Nature. We show (and the Review confirms formally) that although the
difference in conception is analytically slight, it has profound implications for what we can
legitimately expect of the human enterprise. The former viewpoint encourages the thought
3 See, for example, the special issue in the Review of Economic Studies (1974) on the economics of exhaustible resources.
4 A clear statement is in P. A. David, ‘Clio and the Economics of QWERTY’, American Economic Review, 75(2), 332-337.
5 Over the years the absence of Nature’s essentiality from macroeconomic models of growth and development has been remarked
upon by scholars outside the mainstream of economic thinking and practice. But while it is all too easy to criticise existing practices,
it is a lot harder to develop alternative models of comparable analytical depth and empirical reach to ones that have been honed by
years of patient work. That may be why the criticisms have not been taken seriously by mainstream economists.
Preface
The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version 5
that human ingenuity, when it is directed at advancing the common good, can raise global
output indefinitely without affecting the biosphere so adversely that it is tipped into a state
far-removed from where it has been since long before human societies began to form; the latter
is an expression of the thought that because the biosphere is bounded, the global economy
is bounded.
In the chapters that follow, the natural world is studied in relation to the many other assets we
hold in our portfolios, such as the vehicles we use for transport, the homes in which we live,
and the machines and equipment that furnish our offices and factories. But like education and
health, Nature is more than a mere economic good. 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. Once we make that extension, the economics of biodiversity becomes a study in portfolio
management. Which is why I call the concerned citizen the ‘citizen investor’.
Nature has features that differ subtly from produced capital goods. The financier may be
moving assets around in his portfolio, but that is only a figure of speech. His portfolio represents
factories and ports, plantations and agricultural land, and mines and oil fields. Reasonably, he
takes them to be immobile. In contrast, Nature is in large measure mobile. Insects and birds
fly, fish swim, the wind blows, rivers flow, the oceans circulate, and even earthworms travel.
Economists have long realised that Nature’s mobility is one reason the citizen investor will not
take the market prices of natural capital to represent their social worth even when markets for
them exist. We study the wedge between the prices we pay for Nature’s goods and services and
their social values (their social values are called ‘accounting prices’) in terms of what economists
call ‘externalities’. Over the years, a rich and extensive literature has identified the measures that
can be deployed (the forces of the law and social norms) for closing that wedge. The presence
of the wedge is why the citizen investor will insist that companies disclose activities along their
entire supply chain. Disclosure serves to substitute for imperfect market prices.
But in addition to mobility, Nature has two properties that make the economics of biodiversity
markedly different from the economics that informs our intuitions about the character of
produced capital. Many of the processes that shape our natural world are silent and invisible.
The soils are a seat of a bewildering number of processes with all three attributes. Taken
together the attributes are the reason it is not possible to trace very many of the harms inflicted
on Nature (and by extension, on humanity too) to those who are responsible. Just who is
responsible for a particular harm is often neither observable nor verifiable. No social mechanism
can meet this problem in its entirety, meaning that no institution can be devised to enforce
socially responsible conduct.
It would seem then that, ultimately, we each have to serve as judge and jury for our own
actions. And that cannot happen unless we develop an affection for Nature and its processes.
As that affection can flourish only if we each develop an appreciation of Nature’s workings, the
monograph ends with a plea that our education systems should introduce Nature studies from
the earliest stages of our lives, and revisit them in the years we spend in secondary and tertiary
education. The conclusion we should draw from this is unmistakable: if we care about our
common future and the common future of our descendants, we should all in part be naturalists.
My education in what is the substance of the Review began in the late 1970s in conversations
with Karl-Göran Mäler. He encouraged me to develop my ideas on the links between rural
poverty and the state of the local environmental resource-base in the world’s poorest countries,
a subject that was then notably absent from mainstream development economics and remained
absent until well into the 1990s. I was further encouraged by Lal Jayawardena, Director of
the World Institute of Development Economics Research (WIDER), Helsinki, who invited Mäler
Preface
6The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
and me in 1988 to establish a programme at his institute on the environment and emerging
development issues.6
But it wasn’t until 1991 when, as the newly appointed Director of the Beijer Institute of
Ecological Economics, Stockholm, Mäler asked me to serve as Chair of the Institute’s Scientific
Advisory Board, that we were able to pursue the programme jointly with ecologists. The
Institute’s mandate made it possible, which was unusual at that time, for ecologists and
economists to conduct a regular series of workshops in ecological economics. In this, Mäler and
I were aided greatly by the intellectual authority of Kenneth Arrow, Bert Bolin, Paul Ehrlich, and
Simon Levin. The Institute’s activities have continued with the same exacting standard under Carl
Folke, who assumed the Directorship when Mäler retired.
As these developments were confined to Continental Europe, it was natural for us to imagine
regional networks of ecological economists in developing countries. That was made possible
by a grant from the MacArthur Foundation, Chicago. It enabled Mäler and me in 1999 to
establish the South Asian Network for Development and Environmental Economics (SANDEE)
and simultaneously the journal Environment and Development Economics (Cambridge University
Press). Our idea was to offer not only encouragement, but also financial help and a journal
based in the West where university teachers of economics in developing countries could publish
their research findings. We were able soon after to help colleagues in Eastern and Southern
Africa and in Latin America to establish their own networks.7
Mäler and I received further help. This time from Miguel Virasoro, Director of the Abdus Salam
International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Trieste, who invited us in 2001 to create a
programme in ecological economics at ICTP. We used the opportunity to invite economists in our
newly formed networks to the Centre, so that they could prepare their findings for publication
with help from members of the journal’s editorial board. The Review has been much influenced
by the rich body of work by colleagues in those networks.
The economics of biodiversity requires attention to local socio-ecological details. I was
introduced to the idea of social capital and its relevance for ecological economics at the biannual
retreat that Ismail Serageldin convened for an advisory panel he had constituted in the mid-
1990s at the Sustainable Development Vice Presidency of the World Bank.8 My understanding
of the subject has been deepened at the annual teaching workshop that SANDEE has organised
since its inception, from discussions with my fellow lecturers Rabindranath Bhattacharya, Randall
Bluffstone, Enamul Haque, Karl-Göran Mäler, Pranab Mukhopadhyay, M.N. Murty, Mani Nepal,
Subhrendu Pattanayak, Priya Shyamsundar, E. Somanathan, and Jeff Vincent, and participants
from Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, too numerous to mention
individually. On the science of complexity, I have learnt enormously from discussions over a
period of fifteen years with fellow members of the Scientific Advisory Panel of the Programme on
Complex Systems at the James S. McDonnell Foundation, St. Louis, and from the Foundation’s
successive Presidents, John Bruer and Susan Fitzpatrick.
Before beginning work on the Review, I asked Simon Beard, John Bongaarts, Simon Levin, Tom
Lovejoy, and Peter Raven to prepare essays for me on subjects I knew to be essential but on
which I was inexpert. The ideas they developed in their papers are reflected in the present work.
6 The programme’s proceedings were published in P. Dasgupta and K.-G. Mäler, eds., The Environment and Emerging Development
Issues, Vols. I and II (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), and P. Dasgupta, K.-G. Mäler, and A. Vercelli, eds., The Economics of
Transnational Commons (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997).
7 Resource Accounting Network for Eastern and Southern Africa (RANESA) and the Centre for Environmental Economics and Policy
in Africa (CEEPA), Pretoria; and Latin American and Caribbean Environmental Economics (LACEEP) and the Tropical Agricultural
Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE), Costa Rica. SANDEE is based at the International Center for Integrated Mountain
Development (ICIMOD), Kathmandu.
8 The Panel’s proceedings were published in P. Dasgupta and I. Serageldin, eds. (2000), Social Capital: A Multifaceted Perspective
(Washington, DC: World Bank).
Preface
The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version 7
The Review and this monograph have been much influenced also by Scott Barrett and Aisha
Dasgupta, who assumed the lead in collaborative works that form the basis of some of the
central ideas here.
During the Review’s preparation, I gained enormously from correspondence and discussions
with Inger Andersen, Robert Aumann, Scott Barrett, Ian Bateman, Simon Beard, Simon
Blackburn, Caroline Bledsoe, John Bongaarts, Stephen Carpenter, William Clark, Mary Colwell,
Diane Coyle, Aisha Dasgupta, Shamik Dasgupta, Zubeida Dasgupta, Paul Ehrlich, Carl Folke,
Patrick Gerland, Roger Gifford, Lawrence Goulder, Ben Groom, Andy Haines, Geoffrey Heal,
Cameron Hepburn, Girol Karacaoglu, Phoebe Koundouri, Pushpam Kumar, Tim Lenton, Simon
Levin, Justin Lin, Tim Littlewood, Jane Lubchenco, Georgina Mace, Robert Macfarlane, Shunsuke
Managi, Eric Maskin, Henrietta Moore, Tid Morton, Ilan Noy, Gustav Paez, Charles Perrings,
Stuart Pimm, Peter Raven, Martin Rees, Fiona Reynolds, Marten Scheffer, Ingmar Schumacher, V.
Kerry Smith, Denise Spinney, Will Steffen, Nicholas Stern, Thomas Sterner, William Sutherland,
Nicola Tagart, Alistair Ulph, Ruut Veenhoven, Jeff Vincent, Robert Watson, Gavin Wright,
Anastasios Xepapadeas, Menahem Yaari, and Aart de Zeeuw.
I am especially grateful to HM Treasury for enabling Sandy Sheard to assemble an exceptionally
gifted team who have helped me think through the economics of biodiversity. Drawn from
across the public sector and based in HM Treasury, they have provided me with invaluable
support over the course of the Review, including Mark Anderson, Heather Britton, Abbas
Chaudri, Dana Cybuch, Rebecca Gray, Haroon Mohamoud, Robert Marks, Emily McKenzie, Diana
Mortimer, Rebecca Nohl, Felix Nugee, Ant Parham, Victoria Robb, Sandy Sheard, Sehr Syed,
Thomas Viegas, Ruth Waters, and Lucy Watkinson. They have gathered evidence from a wide
range of experts from around the world, arranged for me to meet many of them, supported
my Advisory Panel, prepared a wealth of case studies, edited the Review, and made vital
contributions to drafting elements of the Review itself. Even more, they queried every intellectual
move I made; to a professor, there can be no greater reward.
Above all, I am grateful to Carol Dasgupta, on whom I have tested pretty much every idea in the
Review. Her suggestions on what to emphasise and what is superficial have been invaluable. The
present monograph reflects the impact of her comments and those of Paul Ehrlich.
The influence of Amiya Dasgupta, Kenneth Arrow, Paul Ehrlich, Peter Raven, John Rawls, and
Robert Solow on the way I frame economics has become increasingly evident to me.
Partha Dasgupta
St John’s College, Cambridge
8The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
9The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
Contents
Foreword 1
Preface 3
Part I The State We Are In and Why 11
1 Managing Our Assets 11
2 Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services 14
3 Nature’s Complexities 19
4 Classifying and Valuing Assets 22
5 The Global Economy in the Anthropocene 26
6 Unsustainable Economic Development 29
7 Rich and Poor, Consumption and Population 34
8 Addressing the Impact Inequality, 1: Global Consumption 35
9 Addressing the Impact Inequality, 2: Global Population 36
10 Environmental Externalities 39
10.1 Unidirectional Externalities 41
10.2 Reciprocal Externalities 41
11 Socially Embedded Preferences 43
12 Technology and Institutions 46
12.1 Synergies and Disharmonies 46
12.2 Our Bounded Economy 47
13 Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) 49
14 Common Pool Resources (CPRs) 51
15 The State, Communities and Civil Society 53
16 Arbitraging Assets 58
16.1 Arbitraging Assets at a Point in Time 59
16.2 Arbitraging Assets Across Time 61
17 Inclusive Wealth and Social Well-Being 63
Part II The Road Ahead 69
18 Options for Change 69
19 Nature’s Supply and Our Demands 70
19.1 Conservation and Restoration of Ecosystems 71
19.2 A Sustainable Ecological Footprint 72
20 Measuring Economic Progress 75
21 Transforming Our Institutions and Systems 76
10 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
22 The Global Financial System 77
23 Empowered Citizenship 78
24 Education 79
25 Nature’s Intrinsic Worth: Sacredness 80
Annex 1 Safe Operating Distance From Planetary Boundaries 83
Annex 2 Why Common Pool Resources? 85
References 87
List of Boxes
Box 1 Sustainable Development Goals and the Idea of Sustainable Development
Box 2 The Soils
Box 3 Damming Rivers
Box 4 Absolute Values Are Meaningless
Box 5 Species and Population Extinction
Box 6 The Impact Inequality and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals
Box 7 Food Loss and Waste
Box 8 Family Planning and Reproductive Health
Box 9 Nature Subsidies
Box 10 Externalities and Rights
Box 11 Behavioural Biases
Box 12 Genetically Modified Crops
Box 13 Experience With PES Programmes
Box 14 The Fragility of Trust
Box 15 Global Yield of Primary Producers
Box 16 Discounting Future Consumption
Box 17 Trade, Consumption, and Wealth Transfers
11The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
Part I
The State We Are In and Why
1 Managing Our Assets
We are all asset managers. Whether as farmers or fishers, foresters or miners, households or
businesses, governments or communities, we manage the assets to which we have access, in
line with our motivations as best as we can. But the best each of us is able to achieve with our
portfolios may nevertheless result in a massive collective failure to manage the global portfolio
of all our assets. The analogy of each person in a crowd trying to keep balance on a hanging
bridge and bringing it crashing down speaks to that possibility. The Review has been prompted
by a growing body of evidence that in recent decades humanity has been degrading our most
precious asset, the natural environment, at rates far greater than ever before. Simultaneously,
the material standard of living of the average person in the world is far higher today than it has
ever been; indeed, we have never had it so good.9 In the process of getting to where we are,
though, we have degraded the biosphere to the point where the demands we make of its goods
and services far exceed its ability to meet them on a sustainable basis. That suggests we have
been living at both the best and worst of times.
It is a commonplace assertion that economic development should be so directed that it is
sustainable (Box 1). But the idea of sustainable development cannot be applied unless we have
an understanding of what a sustainable dependence on Nature requires of us.10 Here we study
the natural world in relation to the many other assets we hold in our portfolios, such as the
vehicles we use for transport, the homes in which we live, and the machines and equipment
that furnish our offices and factories. But like education and health, Nature is more than a mere
economic good. 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. Once we make that extension,
the economics of biodiversity becomes a study in portfolio management.
To be sure, not every object of Nature has a positive value for us. Pathogens and pests damage
not only our health and that of our crops and animals, they also destroy pristine forests and
fisheries, so we try to suppress them when they arise. That their emergence is an immanent
feature of Nature’s processes does not alter our attitude to them, for we too are an emergent
feature of those processes. We will confirm that environmental degradation is making their
appearance in the human economy more frequent. COVID-19 is only the most recent arrival.
Pollution is a by-product and waste product of our activities – they too have negative value.
Conservation of mass means that the waste we create has to be deposited somewhere. The
discharge contributes to the degradation of the natural environment. Acid rains damage forests;
carbon emissions into the atmosphere trap heat; industrial seepage and discharge reduce
water quality in streams and underground reservoirs; sulphur emissions corrode structures and
harm human health; and so on. The damage inflicted on each type of asset (buildings, forests,
the atmosphere, fisheries, human health) should be interpreted as depreciation of that asset.
Pollution is the reverse of conservation.
9 Recent books noting humanity’s achievements include Micklethwait and Wooldridge (2000), Ridley (2010), Lomborg (2013),
Norberg (2016), and Pinker (2018). Time series of subjective measures of well-being, such as happiness and life satisfaction,
however, tell a different story (Review, Chapter 11).
10 We use the terms Nature, natural world, natural environment, biosphere, and natural capital, interchangeably.
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
12 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
The Review demonstrates that in order to judge whether the path of economic development
we choose to follow is sustainable, nations need to adopt a system of economic accounts that
records an inclusive measure of their wealth. The contemporary practice of using gross domestic
product (GDP) to judge economic performance is based on a faulty application of economics.
GDP is a flow (so many market dollars of output per year), in contrast to inclusive wealth, which
is a stock (the social worth of the economy’s entire portfolio of assets). Relatedly, GDP does
not include the depreciation of assets, for example the degradation of the natural environment
(we should remember that ‘G’ in GDP stands for gross output of final goods and services, not
output net of depreciation of assets). As a measure of economic activity, GDP is indispensable in
short-run macroeconomic analysis and management, but it is wholly unsuitable for appraising
investment projects and identifying sustainable development. Nor was GDP intended by the
economists who fashioned it to be used for those two purposes. An economy could record
a high rate of growth of GDP by depreciating its assets, but one would not know that from
national statistics.11 Below we show that in recent decades eroding natural assets has been
exactly the means the world economy has deployed for enjoying what is routinely celebrated
as ‘economic growth’, and that sustainable economic growth requires a different measure
than GDP.
Depending on our circumstances, the portfolios of assets we manage differ widely. More than
50% of the world’s population today are urban, and the figure is projected to rise to 70% by
2050. Urban living creates a distance between us and the natural world. Rural communities
in low income countries are much closer to Nature than urban households in high income
countries. Daily activities in rural Africa require goods and services extracted from the local
landscape, in contrast to the daily lives in urban Europe, where people depend equally on, and
extract more from, Nature but do so at several steps removed, often depending on natural
resources from distant parts of the world. Many households in villages in Niger, in contrast to
households in towns in Germany, do not have water on tap to drink, wash, or cook; nor do
they have access to electricity. And their landscape is degrading through unsustainable use.
One measure of resource degradation facing rural communities in low income regions is the
increased time needed for household production. But exit toward a similar landscape is not
always an option, for neighbouring villages also face increasing resource scarcity and out of
necessity are not welcoming. Which is how crowding in the shanty towns of sprawling cities has
become such a familiar sight.
In contrast, degradation of Nature in distant lands has little-to-no bite on the lives of people
in high income countries; there are alternative sources of supply from other parts of the
world, at least for now. Pendrill et al. (2019) for example have estimated that about one-sixth
of the carbon footprint of the average diet in the European Union can be linked directly to
deforestation in tropical countries.
The Review develops the idea of sustainable development by constructing a grammar for
understanding our engagements with Nature – what we take from it, how we transform what
we take from it and return to it, why and how in recent decades we have disrupted Nature’s
processes to the detriment of our own and our descendants’ lives, and what we can do to
change direction.
As this is a global Review, we often speak of the demands that humanity makes on Nature.
But much of the time the Review looks closely at smaller scales and local engagement with
Nature. Differences in the way communities are able to live tell us that people do not experience
increasing resource scarcity in the same way. Food, potable water, clothing, a roof over one’s
head, clean air, a sense of belonging, participating with others in one’s community, and a
reason for hope are no doubt universal needs, but the emphases people place on the goods
11 The United Nations’ Human Development Index (UNDP, 1990) suffers from the same weakness.
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
13The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
and services Nature supplies differ widely. To farmers in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, it
could be declining sources of water and increasing variability in rainfall in the foreground of
global climate change; to indigenous populations in Amazonia it may be eviction not just from
their home, but from their spiritual home; to inhabitants of shanty towns everywhere the worry
could be the infections they are subjected to from open sewers; to the suburban household in
the UK it may be the absence of bees and butterflies in the garden; to residents of mega-cities
it could be the poisonous air they breathe; to the multi-national company it could be the worry
about supply chains, as disruptions to the biosphere makes old sources of primary products
unreliable and investments generally more risky; to governments in many places it may be the
call by citizens, even children, to stem global climate change; and to people everywhere it would
be to experience the consequences in myriad different situations to such forms of environmental
problems as the COVID-19 pandemic. Degradation of Nature is not experienced in the same way
by everyone.
Box 1
Sustainable Development Goals and the Idea of Sustainable Development
In September 2015, the United Nations General Assembly agreed on an agenda for
sustainable development in member countries. Nations committed themselves to meeting
17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 (Figure 1). Reasonably, the quantitative
targets to be met do not distinguish societal ends from the means to achieve them. Thus, in
the chart below Goals 1-6 should be taken to be ends, whereas Goals 7, 9 and 17 are means
to ends, and Goal 8 reflects both ends and means. The SDGs involve 169 socio-economic
targets. To measure progress in meeting those targets, it was proposed to track more than
240 socio-economic indicators over the coming years (United Nations, 2015).
Figure 1 17 Sustainable Development Goals Adopted by All United Nations Member
States in 2015
Source: United Nations (2015).
International agreement on the SDGs was a remarkable, even noble, achievement, for the
Goals unpick features of lives that would enable us to live well. But there is a problem. The
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
14 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
Goals are not accompanied by an examination of whether, assuming they are achieved, they
are sustainable. The Brundtland Commission (1987) defined sustainable development as “...
development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs”. One should interpret it as a requirement that relative
to their respective demographics, each generation should leave to its successor at least
as large a productive base as it had inherited from its predecessor. For if it were to do so,
economic possibilities facing the successor would be no less than those the generation faced
when inheriting the productive base from its predecessor.
The Review shows that an economy’s productive base is an inclusive measure of its wealth
(here, we sketch the idea in Section 17). The Brundtland Commission’s proposal could
then be re-worded to say that development is sustainable if inclusive wealth increases. The
founding text of the discipline of economics was titled ‘The Wealth of Nations’, not ‘The
GDP of Nations’. The notion of wealth the Review formulates is a lot more comprehensive
than the one Adam Smith was able to articulate in his day, but his focus on assets was
exactly right.
2 Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services
Biological diversity, or biodiversity for short, means the diversity of life in all its forms. It is not
uncommon though to regard biodiversity to be the number of species of organisms that inhabit
Earth. Today there are 8-20 million species of organisms, maybe more, with cells containing a
distinct nucleus that houses genetic material in the form of chromosomes (such organisms are
called eukaryotes). Only about 2 million eukaryotes have been recognised and named so far.
There are in addition unknown and much larger numbers of archaea and bacteria, which do
not have a cell nucleus (they are called prokaryotes). Our lack of knowledge, including whether
viruses should be thought of as living organisms, is enormous.12
But biodiversity has further dimensions, including the genes these organisms contain and, as
we will see presently, the functional characteristics of the ecosystems in which they live. The
chemical reactions of Earth’s plants, algae and many bacteria sustain life by converting sunlight
and nutrients into food, useable energy, and the building blocks of life, as well as recycling
waste. Those photosynthesising organisms are called primary producers. Their activities are
often both silent and hidden from view, but they enable ecosystems to function and provide
a multitude of services on which we rely. Which is why the economics of biodiversity is the
economics of the biosphere.
The biosphere, which is the part of Earth occupied by living organisms, is a regenerative
entity. Its rhythms such as those responding to the seasons, shape the regeneration patterns
of the living world. Living systems in turn make use of the non-living, or abiotic, material in
the biosphere and transform them; water, carbon, and nitrogen cycles are expressions of
that. Because the ability to regenerate is a characteristic of living systems, regeneration of the
biosphere is key to the sustainability of the human enterprise.
Movement is a pervasive feature of the biosphere. The wind blows, rivers flow, birds and
insects fly, the oceans circulate, even continents are known to travel. The Antarctic ice sheet
is weakened by activity everywhere; phosphorus-rich runoff from farms in north-central US
contribute to transforming the estuary of the Mississippi River into a dead zone; fertilisers, and
pesticides pollute the rivers and ground waters of the Indo-Gangetic Plain; emissions of soot
12 Hubbell (2015), for example, notes that a recent estimate that there are between 40,000 and 53,000 tree species in the tropics
is based on a very small sample of forest patches. Peter Raven has emphasised to us in correspondence the enormous uncertainty
in our knowledge of the number of species, let alone tree species in the tropics. Moreover, the distribution of species numbers has
a thick tail: a very large proportion of species are of small population size. Pimm and Raven (2019) contains a summary of what
we know.
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
15The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
from kitchens in the Indian sub-continent affect the circulation patterns of the monsoons; fish in
the North Sea eat micro-plastic originating in markets in the Bahamas; and so on.13
Less visible are the changes that take place when a plant dies and is converted into soil by the
actions of organisms that also live and die. Mostly, these transformative processes are invisible to
the naked eye. We do not see the bacterial mass residing beneath our feet, without which life as
we know it would not exist. The activities they are engaged in are undertaken in silence to the
human ear. These three features of Nature – mobility, invisibility and silence – are of profound
significance to the economics of biodiversity (Box 2).
Figure 2 Nature’s Properties
Ecosystems are constituents of the biosphere. They combine the abiotic environment with
communities of plants, animals, fungi, and microorganisms to form combinations of life forms
that control the multitude of natural processes shaping the world around us. Ecosystems are
not defined in a sharp manner from rigid principles. Watersheds, wetlands, coral reefs, and
mangrove forests are ecosystems, as are agricultural land, inland fisheries, freshwater lakes,
rainforests, coastal fisheries, estuaries and the oceans.
Ecosystems are not tightly knit entities – they blend into one another. The Okavango River
comes down from the hills of Angola, waters grasslands in northern Zimbabwe, and as the river
loses its energy, grass gives way to shrubs and, even as the Okavango sinks into the ground,
shrubs give way to the pebbly desert of the Kalahari. But there are ecosystems that have strong
interactions among their own constituents and weak interactions across their boundaries, as in
the visible breaks between the oases and deserts of Egypt. The boundaries may separate sharp
differences in material composition, distribution of organisms, soil types, depth of a body of
water, and so on.
Ecosystems differ in their spatial reach (the Amazon rainforest is an ecosystem, as is the
collection of micro-organisms occupying the gut of a dolphin swimming in its rivers) and
rhythmic time (minutes for bacterial colonies, decades for boreal forests). Some ecosystems
cover regions (the Ganga-Brahmaputra river basin); many are volcanic islands (Micronesia);
13 A new species of crustacean, discovered deep in the Marina Trench in 2014, has been appropriately named Eurythenes plasticus
for the contents of its stomach (reported in The New Yorker, 18 May 2020, p. 15).
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
16 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
others involve clusters of towns (micro-watersheds in the Ethiopian highlands); yet others are
confined to a village (village ponds in Barisal, Bangladesh).14
Each of us is an element in many ecosystems. We each contain microbial ecosystems. The
biosphere is the largest ecosystem of which we are an element – it is our home. Being
embedded within it, we are entirely dependent on it, not just for survival but for our well-
being too. Nature’s goods and services are the foundations of our economies. They include the
provisioning services that supply the goods we harvest and extract (food, water, fibres, timber,
medicines) and cultural services, such as the gardens, parks and coastlines we visit for pleasure,
even emotional sustenance and recuperation. But Nature’s processes also maintain a genetic
library, preserve and regenerate soil, control floods, filter pollutants, assimilate waste, pollinate
crops, maintain the hydrological cycle, regulate climate, and fulfil many other functions besides.
Without those regulating and maintenance services, life as we know it would not be possible.15
Depreciation is the decline in the quantity or quality of an asset over time. In the case of
ecosystems, depreciation is the difference between the rate at which it is harvested and its
regenerative rate. If human extraction of an ecosystem’s provisioning services exceeds its
regenerative rate, the ecosystem depreciates. Depreciation caused by pollutants is the difference
between the rate at which pollutants are discharged into the biosphere and the rate at which
the biosphere is able to degrade them for assimilation in the land and waters. Sustainability of
our engagement with Nature is thus ultimately about the functions of the biosphere, not just
the living part of it.
Biodiversity is a characteristic of ecosystems. It enables ecosystems to flourish and supply the
wide variety of services we have just alluded to. Drawing an analogy with human society, we
could say biodiversity in an ecosystem resembles the extent to which people trust one another.
A further analogy would be the diversity of human talents in an economy needed for it to thrive.
From a financial perspective, just as diversity within a portfolio of financial assets reduces risk
and uncertainty, so biodiversity increases Nature’s resilience to shocks, and thereby reduces risks
to the ecosystem services on which we rely. And drawing on an analogy with indivisible objects
such as automobiles, biodiversity provides ecosystems with spare parts; it enables ecosystems
to be resilient, to be able to adapt to changing circumstances and to be productive. Reduce
biodiversity, and the health of ecosystems generally suffers.16
There is, however, a significant caveat to this idea of productivity. Modern agriculture enables
us to produce food at rates per hectare unthinkable in the past. But it does so at the cost of
biodiversity. Croplands as far as the eye can see are productive, but they are productive in mono
crops and do not even house crop genetic diversity, let alone diversity of species and ecosystems.
Land given over to ranching and animal grazing is productive too, but it is productive in
terms of sheep and cattle. Plantations of oil palm and soya are also productive, but they are
poor in biodiversity. The fields we see today replaced ecosystems that were once in varying
degrees diverse in species – grasslands, wetlands, woodlands, tropical rainforests, swamps.
Moreover, agricultural practices themselves cause biodiversity to be lost, both on and off site.
Industrial fertilisers, insecticides and pesticides destroy soil biodiversity and cause even far-away
estuaries to become dead zones. Tilling and ploughing destroy life in the soils (Box 2).17 The
underlying idea in modern agriculture is the substitution of one production input (industrial
14 Levin (1999) is a deep meditation on the processes that shape the evolving spatial characteristics of the biosphere. The author
explains the significance for life of Nature’s modular structure.
15 The classification of ecosystem services into provisioning, cultural, and regulating and maintenance services follows the Common
International Classification of Ecosystem Services (CICES), which is an adaptation of the classification constructed by the pioneering
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA, 2005 a-d).
16 The scientific literature on this is huge. The interested reader should consult the Review (Chapter 2), which reports findings on the
role of biodiversity in ecosystem functions.
17 We are indebted for discussions with organic farmer Tid Morton of Norfolk, UK, on what ploughing does to the soils.
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
17The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
fertilisers) for another (soil nutrients). Our demand for food, water, timber, fibre, minerals, and
the dams that are built to supply water and produce electricity visibly destroy biodiversity. By
tearing the landscape apart, mining and quarrying are also significant factors in biodiversity
loss. Substitution of produced capital (roads, buildings ports, machines) for natural capital
(ecosystems) has not only characterised our investment activities but also shaped our conception
of economic progress.
Figure 3 Links From Biodiversity to the Economy
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
18 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
Box 2
The Soils
The soils, called the pedosphere by ecologists, appear far less in public discourses on
biodiversity than terrestrial and marine ecosystems. Beach, Luzzadder-Beach, and Dunning
(2019) call the soils, “dark matter biodiversity”. The soils are approximately half air and water,
45% minerals and 5% organic matter. Of that 5%, only 10% is life, but that 10% contains
some of the greatest biodiversity in the biosphere. By one estimate, the soils contain nearly
80% of terrestrial carbon, with an inevitable accompanying estimate that up to 25% of our
uncertainty in the flux of global carbon is traceable to soil erosion.
Soil organisms include earthworms, nematodes, arthropods, protozoa, fungi and bacteria,
but by far the most abundant are fungi and bacteria. These organisms form food webs which
drive soil ecosystem processes, including nutrient cycling, carbon sequestration, nitrogen
storage and water purification, and are important components of global cycling of matter,
energy and nutrients. Advances in molecular genetics have revealed the enormous diversity
of fungi and bacteria associated with plant roots. They play diverse roles, for example, in
promoting plant growth through enhancing plant nutrition and protecting plants from
herbivores and pathogens (Orgiazzi et al. 2016). By one set of estimates, more than 25% of
the Earth’s species live only in the soil or soil litter.
The 2016 Global Soil Biodiversity Atlas was the first attempt to map life in soil at a global
scale (Figure 4). Biodiversity in soil is highest in tropical rainforests and lowest in deserts. Soil
has historically been the world’s largest carbon sink. However, recent studies have suggested
that soil could shift to become a net emitter of carbon, due to climate-change driven
increases in respiration by organisms that derive their nutrition from plants and animal matter
(Lugato, Leip, and Jones, 2018).
The soils also supply most of the water needed by plants and for terrestrial biodiversity. Soil
water makes up 65% of the world’s fresh water, is the source of 90% of global farm output,
and provides over 99% of our food calories (Pimental and Burgess, 2013). The dynamics in
the soils start from plants, which shed leaf litter on soil surface and the narrow band of soil
that is influenced by root secretion and soil microorganisms. The enormous network of fungi
that connect tiny roots (‘rootlets’) to a wider array of soil nutrients and water help to fix
nitrogen (a regulating service). Nitrogen is a macronutrient, vital in the food chain.
The soils are also a major reservoir for medicines (a provisioning service). Pepper et al. (2009)
have reported that over 75% of antibacterial agents and 60% of new cancer drugs approved
between 1983 and 1994 had their origins in the soils, as did 60% of all newly approved
drugs between 1989 and 1995.
When threats to soil biodiversity are mapped, areas at high-risk often correspond with
areas of highest soil biodiversity (Figure 4). A risk index was constructed by combining eight
factors that place soil health under risk: loss of above-ground diversity; pollution and nutrient
overloading; over-grazing; intensive agriculture; fire; soil erosion; desertification; and climate
change (Orgiazzi et al. 2016).
If soil biodiversity were completely lost, the land-based food system would cease to function.
Wagg et al. (2014) found a strong linear relationship between all measured ecosystem
functions and indicators of soil biodiversity. Reductions in soil biodiversity contribute to
several environmental problems, such as an excessive nutrient load (i.e. eutrophication) of
freshwater bodies, reduced above-ground biodiversity and global warming. Declines in soil
biodiversity cause declines in performance of essential processes.
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
19The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
Figure 4 Soil Biodiversity Index
Source: Orgiazzi et al. (2016).
The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA, 2005a-d) found that 15 of the 24 ecosystem
services that were assessed were in decline. The recent global assessment by the
Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES, 2019) reported a
decline in 14 of 18 categories of Nature’s goods and services since 1970. Both global reviews
found our extraction and harvest of provisioning services has increased, while the supply of
regulating and maintenance services has declined. A corresponding decline in cultural services
has also been recorded by the assessments.
There is thus a tension between our demand for provisioning services on the one hand and our
need for regulating, maintenance, and cultural services on the other. The distinction between
drawing on Nature and depending on Nature is all-important here. Tensions between the two
became manifest in recent centuries, but at the global scale it did so only gradually. As we
confirm below, it has become acute since the middle of the 20th century. The biosphere’s
regulating and maintenance services are the underpinnings of human societies, which is why
increases in the material standard of living will come to naught if those underpinnings are
broken irreparably.
3 Nature’s Complexities
Ecosystems are self-regulating, but only within bounds. The biosphere provides regulating and
maintenance services as joint products and ecosystem processes are complementary to one
another. Disturb a process sufficiently and the other processes are affected, adversely. Lovejoy
and Nobre (2018), for example, have observed that the Amazon rainforest generates half of its
rainfall by recycling moisture 5 to 6 times as air masses move from the Atlantic across the basin
to the West. The authors have estimated that at 20-30% further deforestation, central, southern
and eastern Amazon would experience diminished rainfall and lengthier dry seasons, and that
this would tip the rainforest into savannah vegetation. That shift can be expected to affect wind
patterns, altering farming conditions as far away as central USA.
Such a chain of events, resulting in an ecosystem tipping over from one broad mode of
behaviour into another very different mode, can start with fragmentation. Studies have found
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
20 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
that habitat fragmentation reduces biodiversity by impairing important ecosystem functions
and altering nutrient cycles. Striking examples arise when river systems are fragmented with
dams: fragmentation destroys the life cycles of fish species (Box 3). In a long-standing research
programme in the Amazon rainforest, Laurance et al. (2002), Laurance et al. (2011) and Lovejoy
and Hannah (2019) have observed that fragmentation caused by networks of roads affect forest
microclimates, tree mortality, carbon storage, and fauna. The intensity of what the authors call
‘edge effects’ is influenced by such factors as the ages of an ecosystem’s edges (or boundaries)
and the number of nearby edges. One way to read this is to say that the productivity of an
ecosystem is greater than the sum of the productivities of its broken parts. Mathematicians say
ecosystem processes are non-linear.
Fragmentation exposes species to harsh environmental conditions, including fires, diseases, and
invasive species. That amounts to a reduction in an ecosystem’s ability to withstand disturbances
without breaking down – it becomes less resilient. Decline in resilience would accompany a loss
in biodiversity, so there is mutual causation at work. Paleo-biologists have found fragmentation
of natural habitats to be a good early-warning sign of biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse.
Chance events that would previously have been absorbed by the ecosystem that has lost its
resilience can trigger a sudden, dramatic change and loss of its integrity.18
Shallow bodies of water such as garden ponds offer a good illustration of synergies among
Nature’s processes. A major reason ponds tip from a crystalline state to a eutrophic state is the
inflow of phosphorus from fertilisers applied to lawns. If the rate of inflow is small enough,
ponds remain crystalline, but not otherwise. Freshwater lakes suffer from a similar fate when
phosphorus seeps into them from farms. Accumulation of small pressures (regular runoff into a
lake) can tip a lake into a eutrophic state.19
The time involved in such dramatic shifts (they are called ‘regime shifts’ by ecologists) differs
enormously, depending on the character (e.g. size) of the ecosystem. It could take decades
for a rainforest to tip over into a savannah, whereas grasslands have been known to tip into
shrub in years; and garden ponds have been known to tip into a eutrophic state in a matter
of hours (Figure 5). Reversing direction is costly because an ecosystem’s history is imprinted
in its current state: ecosystems have memory.20 One can help to bring an ecosystem back to a
state near to where it had previously been, but only at a cost. The phenomenon is known as
‘hysteresis’. Examples abound: eutrophic ponds can only be brought back to a crystalline state
at a cost; a rainforest that has become savannah cannot be brought back – the move is to all
intents and purposes irreversible. Thus, restoration is costlier than conservation, other things
equal.21 The institutions, physical infrastructure, and social practices we have fashioned since
establishing agriculture some 11,000 years ago also display hysteresis. They have been shaped
under broadly speaking stable biospheric conditions. Abrupt changes to settled conditions
are costly because the investments we had made in the past are hard to reverse. In the world
of finance, this phenomenon is commonly known as ‘stranded assets’, such as investments in
structures for oil and gas extraction which become obsolete in the transition to renewable and
low-carbon energy.
18 It is now becoming widely acknowledged that fragmentation of ecosystems is associated with the spread of zoonotic viruses, that
is, viruses that cross from animals to humans. Tropical rainforests have great biodiversity. Deforestation creates fragments. Often
the viruses come from edges of fragments, which is where humans first encounter the forest animals. It is thought that COVID-19
crossed from bats to humans through an intermediary animal. Daily and Ehrlich (1996) is an excellent early study of the connection
between biodiversity loss and the frequency and intensity of pandemics.
19 See Carpenter, Ludwig, and Brock (1999). A body of water that is so rich in nutrients and animals that algae grow and are
degraded by bacteria to the point where oxygen is severely depleted is said to be in a eutrophic state.
20 A rough analogy would be our inability to forget consciously what we have learnt, making it impossible to return to a previous
state of mind.
21 Being ecosystems ourselves, we also harbour multiple stability regimes. The old adage about human health that ‘prevention is
better than the cure’ is based on that same feature.
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
21The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
Figure 5 Multiple Stability Regimes
Source: Folke et al. (2004). Permission to reproduce from Annual Reviews, Inc.
Box 3
Damming Rivers
Fragmentation can prevent migratory populations from conforming to their behaviour
over the life cycle. That translates into species extinction. Dams are a major contributor to
freshwater biodiversity loss. The construction of high dams is favoured by national economic
planners because they expand irrigation, supply energy and offer protection against floods.
One problem is that they also disrupt the hydrology of freshwater ecosystems by fragmenting
them.22 Fragmentation obstructs migration routes, which are essential for spawning and
feeding – it limits dispersal.
Freshwater habitats cover only 0.8% of Earth’s surface, nevertheless one-third of described
vertebrates, including approximately 40% of fish species, are found in them. Barbarossa
et al. (2020) have constructed a connectivity index of river water by combining species
occurrence ranges with the hydrology and location of dams. Fragmentation can then be read
as reduction of the index. The authors report that the approximately 40,000 high dams that
currently exist worldwide have altered 50% of the volume of river water, by either regulation
of water flow or fragmentation, and that the pending construction of some 3,700 more high
dams will raise the figure to over 90%.23 Current measures of fragmentation are highest in
22 There are other problems too, for example, that communities are displaced, often without consultation or compensation.
23 High dams are defined as dams that are taller than 15 metres. The figure of 40,000 for the number of existing high dams
worldwide is probably an underestimate, but it pays to work with conservative figures even when they correspond to massive
disruptions.
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
22 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
the US, Europe, South Africa, India and China, but increases in fragmentation due to future
dams are estimated by the authors to be especially high in the tropics, with declines in the
connectivity index of some 20-40% in the Amazon, Niger, Congo and the Mekong Basin.
If high dams are environmentally damaging, they would appear to be uneconomic even if
environmental concerns were set aside. Ansar et al. (2014) reported findings from a study
of large hydropower dams for which they could find reliable data. The authors’ sample of
245 projects initiated in the period 1934 to 2007 covered 65 countries. Construction costs
on average were found to have been double the figures projected in their original feasibility
studies, reducing the realised rates of return on most to below what are available from
government bonds (4-5% annually). Smaller-scale dams, and fish ladders that allow fish to
pass around dams, have been found to reduce risks to fisheries through fragmentation.
4 Classifying and Valuing Assets
Assets are durable. Durability, of course, does not mean everlasting, but unlike services, assets
are not fleeting. It is tempting to call all assets capital goods, a term that has proved to be so
attractive that it now stretches to include knowledge (‘knowledge capital’); the law, the market
system, and financial institutions (‘institutional capital’); mutual trust, social norms, and group
solidarity (‘social capital’); culture and personal norms (‘cultural capital’); even religion (‘religious
capital’). Economists have been more reticent; they confine the use of the term to assets that are
measurable.24 In the past, economists reserved the term ‘capital goods’ even more stringently
than they do now, for they only included assets that are material (tangible) and alienable (i.e.
whose ownership is transferable). Roads, buildings, machines and ports are ready examples.
As patents held by a firm are part of the firm’s asset base, they appear in its balance sheet. So
intangible and alienable assets are also included on the list of capital goods. Taken together, they
are called produced capital.
The range of capital goods in the economist’s lexicon has broadened over the years to include
intangible but non-alienable assets such as health, education, aptitude and skills, which, taken
together, form human capital. Economists today include human capital as a category of capital
goods because they have discovered ways to measure its value – not only to the individuals who
acquire it, but also to society at large.
In the past decades, economists have developed methods for measuring the value individuals
place on natural resources; so we now have a third category of capital goods: natural capital.
The methods can be involved, for natural capital ranges over plants (they are tangible and
alienable), pollinators (they are tangible and often non-alienable), the view from one’s sea-front
home (it is intangible and alienable) and the global climate (it is intangible and non-alienable).
24 See Arrow (2000) and Solow (2000) for strong criticisms of the increasing practice of regarding social capital as capital. This does
not make social capital unimportant: it is a central feature of effective institutions, as we discuss below.
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
23The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
Figure 6 Interaction Between the Capitals
As the Review explores reasons for the growing disparity between private incentives and public
aspirations, we pay particular attention to the wedge between market prices of capital goods,
especially the market prices of natural capital, and what should be called their ‘social worth’,
or alternatively, their ‘social scarcity value’. Economists call them accounting prices. A capital
good’s accounting price is the contribution an additional unit of it would make to societal
well-being (or more narrowly, the common good).25 Being durable, capital goods offer their
services over their lifetime. So the accounting price of a capital good reflects the contribution its
flow of services over its lifetime makes to social well-being. Box 4 shows that absolute values of
ecosystems (they are a form of natural capital) have no meaning; only comparisons of values tell
us something.
Box 4
Absolute Values Are Meaningless
Absolute values of portfolios carry no information; only portfolio comparisons do. The value
of a marginal change to the biosphere is meaningful because it is presumed that humanity
will survive the change to experience it, but the matter is different when it comes to valuing
Nature as a whole. It may be because growth and development economists ignored our place
in the natural world, environmentalists some years ago were tempted to value the whole of
Nature, to show that it is of great economic worth. In a widely cited publication in Science,
the authors estimated that the global flow of the biosphere’s services was, towards the end
of the 20th century, worth US$16-54 trillion annually, with a point estimate of US$33 trillion
(Costanza et al. 1997). As that figure was larger than global GDP in the mid-1990s, we were
meant to appreciate the economic significance of natural capital.
25 Accounting prices are also called ‘shadow’ prices.
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
24 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
The estimate is a case of misplaced quantification. As the authors recognise, if Nature
is destroyed, life would cease to exist. But then who would then be here to receive
US$33 trillion of annual benefits if humanity were to exchange its very existence for them?
Economics, when used with care, is meant to serve our ethical values. The language it
provides helps us to choose in accordance with those values. Despite recognising this, the
authors of the paper imply that the biosphere is valuable because it can be imputed a large
monetary value. That is to get things backward.26
Measurement problems are also rife in estimating the stock of many kinds of natural capital
(fisheries stocks in their national waters are generally not recorded by governments), but it
is far better to work with rough and ready figures than to ignore whole swathes of capital
goods by pretending they do not exist. Unfortunately, the macroeconomic theories of growth
and development that have shaped our beliefs about economic possibilities and the progress
and regress of nations do not recognise humanity’s dependence on Nature. The Review
corrects that mistake.27
Accounting prices reflect an accommodation between economic futures that are both socially
desirable and socio-ecologically possible, which means they reflect social scarcity values of
capital goods. There are cases where market prices approximate accounting prices, but for
reasons we explore below (Section 7), many forms of natural capital simply do not have markets
– they are free to the user. So special methods have to be devised. There is now a wide range
of methods for doing that, from asking people to state their willingness to pay for restoring a
degraded beach (that is, estimating an ‘amenity value’ of Nature), to asking them to declare
the value they attach to protecting the migratory route of snow geese (that is, estimating what
people may regard as an ‘intrinsic value’ of Nature), to inferring the value of an ecosystem
service from the contributions they make to the production of goods and services whose social
scarcity values can be estimated (that is, estimating the ‘use value’ of Nature’s services), such as
the contribution of forests as habitat for pollinators that support crop production.
Valuation methods that involve estimating the use value of Nature by determining the
productivity of its processes involve a blend of ecological and economic reasoning: The
accounting value of a lake fishery can be approximated by the market value of catch over time;
the social costs of air- or water-borne pollution can be estimated at least in part by measuring
the losses to human health attributable to it; the minimum value of restoring a watershed can
be inferred from the cost of building a water treatment plant; and so on.28
To date, estimates of accounting values of natural capital have, for the most part, not included
the health benefits green spaces that ecosystems confer on us. They have remained even
further from including the mental health benefits we derive from green spaces. However, the
importance of including health benefits in natural capital accounts is increasingly recognised,
and there are an emerging number of studies attempting to elicit values (White et al. 2016).
Humans cannot survive without the rich biodiversity of microbiota that exist on our skin and
in our guts, urogenital tracts and airways. They influence our susceptibility to disease and play
an important role in our health under changing environmental conditions. We are ecosystems
ourselves, with exchanges taking place constantly between bacteria, viruses, fungi, archaea, and
protozoa in the natural environment and those in our bodies. We need contact with sources of
26 Formally we have a case where the value of an entire something has no meaning, and is therefore of no use, even though the
value of changes to that same thing – expressed as differences – not only has meaning, but also has use.
27 The absence of Nature is also prominent in the economic growth and development models that inform economics and finance
ministries and central banks.
28 Excellent accounts can be found in the treatise by Freeman (2003) and the collection of essays in Haque, Murty and Shyamsundar
(2011). Kareiva et al. (2011) and Vincent (2011) contain clear accounts of valuation methods that estimate the productivity of
natural capital in providing ecosystem services.
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
25The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
diverse microbiota. Loss of biodiversity can and does have an impact on our health (e.g. weaker
resistance to disease). Studies suggest that macro-biodiversity (e.g. plants and trees) in urban
environments is associated with microbe diversity and in turn with a healthy human microbiome,
known to be linked to a wide range of health outcomes (Review, Chapter 11). There is evidence
too that repeated contact with Nature contributes not only to long term hedonic well-being
(happiness, pleasure), but to life satisfaction as well. A series of large-scale European studies
based on data from national surveys has found that living in an area with more green space
is associated with less mental distress than otherwise. A longitudinal study covering over
10,000 UK residents found that living in greener urban space was associated with greater life
satisfaction (White et al. 2013)29.
Figure 7 Market Prices and Accounting (or Shadow) Prices
What about knowledge, institutions and social capital – are they not assets as well? They are,
but as with biodiversity, measurement problems abound (try, for example, to compare the value
to a nation of ‘good governance’ with the real estate value of its capital city). So we call them
enabling assets, their worth is reflected in accounting prices. Enabling assets bestow value to an
economy’s capital goods. Even if the composition of capital goods is the same in two societies,
the one where people trust one another with reason would be found to be wealthier than the
one where people are distrustful of one another. Mutual trust is an enabling asset: other things
equal, the accounting price of, say, scientific journals in a country at peace would be higher than
in a country torn by civil strife. Likewise, other things equal, a more biodiverse ecosystem is more
productive in terms of the regulating and maintenance services it supplies. So biodiversity is also
an enabling asset.
The relationship runs the other way also. Knowledge in the sciences, technologies, and the
arts and humanities (they are all enabling assets) is created and acquired, but it is created and
29 See Review (Chapter 11), for the distinction between measures of hedonic well-being and life satisfaction.
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
26 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
acquired by people (human capital) in combination with produced capital (libraries, laboratories)
and natural capital (raw materials and ecosystem services). Institutions are also created by
people, as is mutual trust, which is the glue that holds communities together. Financial capital
facilitates exchange (among people and across time), so it too is an enabling asset.
There are therefore three categories of capital goods in our classification and a wide range
of enabling assets. Enabling assets may not be measurable, but that does not matter: they
enable human societies to function well, and that can be measured. Accounting prices reflect
that worth.
5 The Global Economy in the Anthropocene
World population in 1950 was around 2.5 billion and global output of final goods and
services (i.e. global GDP) at 2011 prices was around 9 trillion international dollars (i.e. dollars
at purchasing price parity, PPP).30 The average person’s annual income was around 3,300
dollars PPP, a high figure by historical standards. Since then the world has prospered beyond
recognition. Life expectancy at birth in 1950 was 46; today it is around 73. The proportion
of the world’s population living in absolute poverty (currently 1.90 dollars per day) has fallen
from nearly 60% in 1950 to less than 10% today (World Bank, 2019).31 In 2019, the global
population had grown to over 7.7 billion even while global GDP per capita had risen to around
16,000 dollars PPP (at 2011 prices). The world’s output of final goods and services was a bit
above 120 trillion dollars PPP (at 2011 prices), meaning that globally measured economic activity
had increased more than 13-fold in only 70 years, a rate of increase that had never remotely
been experienced before (Figure 8).
This remarkable achievement has, however, come alongside a massive deterioration of the
biosphere’s health. In a review of evidence from the past 11,000 years (Earth scientists call
the period the Holocene), Waters et al. (2016) tracked the human-induced evolution of soil
nitrogen and phosphorus inventories, and carbon dioxide and methane in sediments and ice
cores. They report that time series of a broad class of global biogeochemical signatures display
a flat trend over millennia until some 250 years ago, when they begin a slow rise that continues
until the middle of the 20th century, when they show a sharp and accelerating rise. The trends in
global economic activity over the past 70 years that we have summarised above and displayed
in Figure 8 match these findings. The authors proposed that the mid-20th century should be
regarded as the time we entered the Anthropocene.32 Annex 1 presents a way of defining the
Anthropocene through the idea of ‘planetary boundaries’.
30 In constructing international dollars (i.e. dollars at purchasing price parity, PPP), the official exchange rates of various currencies
with respect to the US dollar are converted to bring the purchasing power in the regions on par with one another. In what follows,
‘dollars’ mean ‘international dollars’.
31 Global poverty is likely to have risen sharply in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, partially reversing some of the improvement
over recent decades. In October 2020, the World Bank suggested that the number of people living in extreme poverty would likely
increase from 88 million to 115 million in 2020 (World Bank, 2020a).
32 The term ‘Anthropocene’ was popularised by Crutzen and Stoermer (2000) to mark a new epoch in which humans dominate the
biosphere. The Anthropocene Working Group has proposed that the immediate post-war years should be regarded as the start of
the Anthropocene (Voosen, 2016).
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
27The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
Figure 8 Global Real GDP Since 1750
Source: Our World in Data based on World Bank (2020a), Maddison (2018), Bolt et al. (2018) and Review calculations.
Perhaps the most visceral sign of environmental degradation is species extinction. Uncertainties
in the rates at which species are becoming extinct mirror our lack of knowledge of the number
of species in existence (recall the range 8-20 million, possibly more, for eukaryotes, Section 2).
The figures presented in Box 5 reflect these uncertainties, but explain why the Holocene is the
period when Earth began experiencing its sixth mass extinction.
Box 5
Species and Population Extinction
Largely as a result of human activities – land- and ocean-use change in all its varieties –
species and the component populations of still-extant species are becoming extinct far more
rapidly than in the past. Current extinction rates of species in various orders are estimated to
have risen to 100-1,000 times the average extinction rate over the past tens of millions of
years (the ‘background rate’) of 0.1-1 per million species per year (expressed as E/MSY), and
are continuing to rise.33 To illustrate in absolute terms, 1,000 species would become extinct
every year if the number of species was 10 million and 100 E/MSY was the current extinction
rate. Despite the uncertainties, the figures put the scale of humanity’s presence in the
biosphere in perspective. The figures also tell us why Earth scientists and ecologists say we are
witnessing the sixth great biological extinction since life began.34
Judged by what is known about relatively well-studied groups (terrestrial vertebrates, plants),
some 20% of species could become extinct within the next several decades, perhaps twice as
many by the end of the century. It is estimated that 84 mammal species have become extinct
since 1500 and 32 species of mammal have gone extinct since 1900 (IUCN, 2020; Pimm and
Raven, 2019).
In a survey of population data on nearly 30,000 species of terrestrial vertebrates, Ceballos,
Ehrlich, and Raven (2020) have estimated how many are on the brink of extinction. Their
criterion was populations with fewer than 1,000 individuals. By this measure, 515 species are
on the brink, representing 1.7% of the vertebrates on the authors’ survey list. If extinction
33 See De Vos et al. (2014), Pimm et al. (2014), and Ceballos, Ehrlich, and Ehrlich (2015).
34 The Sixth Extinction has also been called the Holocene Extinction, which began at the end of the last glacial period some 11,000
years ago, the signature being provided by the extinction of large land mammals. Kolbert (2014) is a narrative on the mass extinction
under way.
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
28 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
follows at the same rate, the population of terrestrial vertebrates will halve in about 40
years. But the rate is likely to increase at an accelerated rate, for several reasons. First, human
pressure on the biosphere is increasing (see below); second, the distribution of those species
on the brink of extinction coincides with hundreds of other endangered species, surviving
precariously in regions with high human impact; and third, close ecological interactions
among species tend to move other species toward annihilation – extinction breeds extinction.
Assuming all species on the brink have experienced similar trends, the authors estimate that
more than 237,000 populations of those species have vanished since 1900.
Trends in biogeochemical signatures and species extinctions are consistent with those in the
global stock of natural capital. Managi and Kumar (2018) tracked the accounting values of
produced capital, human capital, and natural capital over the period 1992 to 2014 in 140
countries.35 In their work, renewable resources include forest resources (stocks of timber and
a selected group of non-timber resources), fisheries (stocks were estimated from past records
of catch), agricultural land (cropland and pasture land); while non-renewable resources cover
fossil fuels and a selected set of minerals. Figures for the social cost of carbon (a negative
accounting price) of greenhouse gas emissions were used to address future losses from global
climate change.
Figure 9 displays the authors’ estimates of global accounting values per capita of the three
classes of capital goods over the period 1992 to 2014. It shows that the value of produced
capital per capita doubled and human capital per capita increased by around 13%, but the value
of the stock of natural capital per capita declined by nearly 40%.
Figure 9 Global Wealth Per Capita, 1992 to 2014
Source: Managi and Kumar (2018).
35 The value of produced capital was obtained from official national accounts. Data limitations meant that natural capital was limited
to minerals and fossil fuels, agricultural land, forests as sources of timber, and fisheries. Market prices were used to value them. The
accounting value of human capital was based on methods that economists have devised for valuing education and health.
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
29The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
6 Unsustainable Economic Development
As the biosphere is a regenerative entity, it pays to let our imagination roam and regard it to
be a gigantic version of a lake fishery (forests would be an equally good metaphor)36. If the
stock of fish is low, the lake provides ample nutrients for the fish population to grow, which
is a way of saying that the fishery is a regenerative resource. But because the lake is of finite
size, it is able to provide a limited flow of nutrients. Even though the fish population increases
initially, nutrients per unit of fish population decline, so the population eventually attains a
size determined by the lake’s carrying capacity and fluctuates around it. If fish-harvesters enter
the scene, the fish population will decline, but so long as each period’s harvest is kept within
bounds, the fishery can survive indefinitely. That is a sustainable fishery. But if fishers harvest
at a rate that is consistently above the fishery’s regenerative rate, it is doomed. That is an
unsustainable fishery.
The biosphere is finite in extent, so the flow of goods and services it provides is bounded. We
may liken our activities to those of the fishers in our parable, but unlike them we inhabit the
lake, we are not external to it. We take goods and services from our planet and we deposit
our waste into it: material has to balance. What we take from our planet over a period of time
and put back in as waste is known as our ecological footprint. And so the footprint not only
includes the goods and services we harvest and extract from the biosphere, it also includes the
rate at which the biosphere is able to treat our waste. The full set of provisioning, regulating,
maintenance, and cultural services comes into play here. We may use the economist’s lexicon
and call our ecological footprint the demand we make of the biosphere.37
In a classic paper, Ehrlich and Holdren (1971) used the term impact to refer to what we have just
called ‘ecological footprint’ and ‘demand’. The authors decomposed humanity’s impact on the
biosphere in terms of our activities and the efficiency with which we are able to transform the
biosphere’s supply of goods and services into our activities. Reasonably, they took global GDP to
be a measure of human activities and observed that it is the play of technology (and institutions,
although the authors did not speak of the latter explicitly) that determines the efficiency with
which we convert the biosphere’s goods and services into GDP.
But global GDP is the product of human population size and global GDP per capita. So we have
three factors to reckon with: population size; per capita GDP, and the efficiency with which we
convert the biosphere’s goods and services into GDP; and the extent to which the biosphere
is transformed by global waste products. The factors are of course not independent of one
another and are, in any case, the outcome of our choices. Fertility rates both influence and are
influenced by our standard of living, and both influence and are influenced by the technology
and institutions we devise and bring into play. It is nevertheless useful to work with this three-
way breakdown of our ecological footprint. It enables us to identify trade-offs. For example, it
says that if the efficiency factor remains unchanged, the trade-off between population size and
the living standard is of an inverse form: doubling the global population needs to be matched
by halving global GDP per capita if humanity’s ecological footprint is to remain unchanged.
Human population has been growing, as has global GDP per capita. Efficiency has also
increased, but not to the extent needed to counter the growth in population numbers and GDP
per capita (Box 6). Figures 10 and 11 show that both have grown in recent centuries in much
the way of global GDP (Figure 8): a slow rise at the start of the industrial revolution and a sharp
increase that has itself been increasing since the mid-1950s.
36 This and the following section are based on A. Dasgupta and Dasgupta (2017) and Barrett et al. (2020).
37 That material must balance was the insight in Kneese, Ayres and d’Arge (1970) and Māler (1974). The Review puts the material
balance condition to work to show that economic output cannot be made to grow indefinitely. We return to this point in Section 11.
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
30 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
Figure 10 Global Population Since 1750
Source: Maddison (2010), UNPD (2019) and Review calculations.
Figure 11 Global Real GDP Per Capita Since 1750
Source: Our World in Data based on World Bank (2020a), Maddison (2018), Bolt et al. (2018) and Review calculations.
Recall Figure 8, which showed the growth in global real GDP since 1750. It can be interpreted as
saying that, assuming the efficiency factor has not matched GDP growth, the global ecological
footprint (i.e. human global impact) has been increasing. But we cannot tell whether the
footprint exceeds the biosphere’s ability to regenerate itself. That question has been studied in a
bold programme of research by the Global Footprint Network (GFN). They have estimated that
the ratio of our demand from the biosphere to its regeneration rate increased from 1 in the late
1960s to 1.6 in 2020 (Wackernagel and Beyers, 2019; Lin et al. 2020).38 The authors speak of
1.6 figuratively as the number of Earths needed to satisfy our current demand on a sustainable
38 Their estimate is that the ratio was less than 1 previously. The methods deployed by GFN to estimate the ratio can be found in
their annual publications. Wackernagel and Beyers (2019) presents a non-technical account of the findings. It should be noted that
the 2020 estimate (1.6) was slightly lower relative to 2019 due to the falls in economic activity due to COVID-19 induced lockdowns
around the world.
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
31The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
basis. The exact figure is of little significance, what matters is that the evidence that now has
been collected from a wide range of investigations (Section 5 and Annex 1) says that in recent
decades the gap between demand and supply has been widening and will continue to widen
unless humanity is able to reverse the trends in its demands. We borrow from Barrett et al.
(2020) and call the gap between the global ecological footprint and the biosphere’s regenerative
rate the Impact Inequality (Figure 12).
In a healthy biosphere, humanity could, on reasonable utilitarian grounds, choose to draw it
down somewhat and use the goods and services Nature supplies not only for consumption
but also for accumulating produced capital (roads, buildings, machines, ports) and human
capital (health, education, aptitude). That is what we have been doing over millennia and is
what economic development has come to mean among many people.39 That was a legitimate
formulation of economic development when our ecological footprint was less than the
biosphere’s ability to supply goods and services to meet that demand at a sustainable rate.
Today the matter is different.
Figure 12 The Impact Inequality
There are therefore four avenues available to humanity for transforming the Impact Inequality
into an Impact Equality. They involve finding ways to:
(i) reduce per capita global consumption;40
(ii) lower future global population from what it is today;
(iii) increase the efficiency with which the biosphere’s supply of goods and services are
converted into global output and returned to the biosphere as waste; and
(iv) invest in Nature through conservation and restoration to increase our stock of Nature
and its regenerative rate.
Box 6 formalises this and uses empirical findings of our recent economic experiences to estimate
how fast the efficiency with which we are able to transform the biosphere’s goods and services
39 Barbier (2011) is an excellent historical account of that process.
40 For simplicity of exposition, we are equating global output with global consumption.
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
32 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
into GDP has to be if the SDGs are to be met by 2030.41 We find that the rate at which it must
increase vastly exceeds the rate it has been achieved in the recent past.42 As there is enormous
waste in our use of provisioning services (global food waste alone, from source to final
consumption, is an astonishing 30% or thereabouts43), there is scope for efficiency gains. There
is also waste attributable to the wide range of subsidies we pay ourselves for the use of Nature’s
services. Many of the biosphere’s goods and services (e.g. water, fossil fuels) thus come with a
negative price tagged to them. Globally, Nature’s subsidies amount to an annual US$4-6 trillion,
or approximately 5-7% of global GDP (Box 9).
There are, however, limits to the extent our global demand can be reduced by being more
efficient in our consumption of goods and services (see Section 12 on technological advances).
Which is why our crude estimates say we must also invest in Nature and attend to two
problems that are rarely addressed in the economics of growth and climate change: finding
ways to reduce global per capita consumption (the required redistribution measures would
be enormous) and hastening the demographic transition in countries and regions where
larger families are the norm. We study the contours of these two neglected problems first
(Sections 7-9).
Box 6
The Impact Inequality and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals
We denote humanity’s global impact on the biosphere by I and the biosphere’s regenerative
rate by G. Both I and G are estimated in terms of the accounting values of the biosphere’s
goods and services, expressed, say, in real (international) dollars per year. I does not have
to equal G, for, continuing to use the parable of fisheries, the difference between the two
would automatically be accommodated by a change in the biosphere’s stock. We write the
latter as S. Declines in S are to be read as deterioration of the health of the biosphere. For
vividness, we could imagine that every ecosystem is valued at its accounting price, and S is
the sum of the accounting values of all the ecosystems on Earth. S is a stock, expressed in
real (international) dollars. As with the example of fisheries, G depends on S, so we write that
dependence as G(S). But as S is bounded, so is G bounded.
N denotes global population, y global GDP per capita, and α a numerical measure of the
efficiency with which we are able to convert the biosphere’s goods and services into the final
products we produce and consume. Global GDP is then N times y, which we write as Ny.
The larger is α, the smaller is the demand we make on Nature for the same level of GDP.44
Conversely, the larger is Ny, the larger is the demand we make on Nature for the same level
of α. We may then express I as Ny/α and thereby write the fundamental inequality at the core
of the economics of biodiversity as
I = Ny/α > G(S) (1)
41 Box 6 contains the one bit of technical material in this abridged version of the Review. Readers can skip it without losing the
thread of the argument. We have prepared it for readers who are curious to learn how mathematical arguments advance our
quantitative understanding of socio-ecological possibilities for the future.
42 COVID-19 can be expected to set the SDGs even further back than our computations.
43 This is only a very rough estimate; there is a lack of information at some stages of production, See FAO (2019).
44 A simple illustration would be installing double glazing in homes. α would increase because the same warmth would be enjoyed
at a reduced dependence on electricity or gas.
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
33The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
Expression (1) is the global Impact Inequality (Figure 12).45
Figures 10 and 11 revealed that Ny has been increasing in recent decades at an
unprecedented rate; Figure 9 revealed that S has been declining in recent decades; and MA
(2005) and IPBES (2019) have confirmed that G has also been declining in recent decades.
The Global Footprint Network has found that the gap between I and G has been rising in
recent decades to the point where the ratio of I to G in 2019 was 1.7. In recent decades,
S has declined even as the gap between I and G has grown. The estimates of the character
of modern economic growth that we have collated here now allow us to ask whether the
United Nations’ SDGs for 2030 were ever realisable.
As a simple exercise, we assume that global GDP at constant prices will continue to increase
at its average annual rate since 1970, of 3.4%. Managi and Kumar (2018) estimated that
the value of per capita global natural capital declined by 40% between 1992 to 2014. That
converts to an annual percentage rate of decline of 2.3%.46 But world population grew
approximately at 1.1% in that period. It follows that the value of the stock of natural capital
S declined at an annual rate of (2.3-1.1)% = 1.2%. Because there are no estimates of the
form of the G-function, we assume for simplicity that G is proportional to S. So G can also be
taken to have declined at an annual rate of 1.2%. As we have seen, the GFN has estimated
that I/G increased from 1 in 1970 to 1.7 in 2019, which implies that it increased at an
average annual rate of 1.1%. The estimates for the annual percentage rates of change of Ny,
G, and [Ny/α]/G enable us to calculate that α had been increasing at an annual percentage
rate of 3.5% in the period 1992 to 2014.
Suppose we want to equalise Ny/α and G in year 2030, that is, reduce the ratio of [Ny/α] to
G from its current value of 1.7 to 1 in 10 years’ time. That would require that the ratio of
Ny/α to G should decline at an average annual rate of 5.4%. Assuming Ny continues to grow
at 3.4% annually and G continues to decline at 1.2% (i.e. business is assumed to continue as
usual), how fast must α rise? The answer is an annual rate of 10.0%. As that is a huge hike
from the historical rate of 3.5%, it suggests we must look at other policies if the SDGs are to
be sustainable.
Suppose Ny was to remain constant from now to year 2030 and draconian steps were
taken by us over our demands to limit the rate of deterioration of the biosphere to 0.1% a
year. A simple calculation shows that the required increase in α is an annual (5.4+0.1)% =
5.5%. Even that is almost a 60% increase of the 3.5% rate at which α has been increasing in
recent decades. These are crude estimates, but they serve to illustrate the point that increases
in efficiency alone are highly unlikely to be able to close the gap between I and G in the
next decade.
The Impact Inequality also points to the error in imagining that perpetual economic growth
is possible in the long run. It is significant that a mechanical engine that converts heat into
work at 100% efficiency is a theoretical impossibility. The biological counterpart is that it
would not be possible even theoretically to convert our further waste into a state that makes
no further demands on the assimilative services of the biosphere; for if we were able to do
that, we would be able to break free of Nature. That impossibility places a bound on α,
meaning that no matter how ingenious we can be, global output (Ny) must also be bounded.
45 The expression for global impact Ny/α in equation (1) could be thought to be saying that, for any given value of α, N and y are
in inverse relation to each other – for instance, that if N was to double then y would have to halve if global impact Ny/α was to
be held constant. Arithmetically that would be correct, but the thought could be misconstrued. The reason is that N and y are not
independent of one another: we humans have not only mouths, but hands and brains too. Thus, y is a function of N. The Review
(Chapter 4*) presents a complete capital model from which ‘trade-offs’ between N and y can be estimated at various stages of
economic development. Dasgupta and Dasgupta (2021) have constructed simple methods that can be deployed on the model to
calculate trade-offs between N and y that are consistent with sustainable development.
46 The interested reader can follow the arithmetic steps in the corresponding Box in the Review should she wish to do so.
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
34 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
7 Rich and Poor, Consumption and Population
How does ecological footprint vary with income?47 Figure 13 shows that although the higher
a country’s income, the greater is its footprint, that footprint increases with income less than
proportionately. It seems our impact on the biosphere increases with affluence, but the efficiency
with which we transform the biosphere’s goods and services into the market value of final
goods and services also increases with affluence. But that poses a cruel dilemma: other things
equal, egalitarian objectives such as those enshrined in the SDGs may clash with the global need
to reduce our ecological footprint.48
Figure 13 Ecological Footprint and Income
Source: World Bank data on GDP per capita in 2018 (thousands, constant prices in 2017 international dollars), and estimates from
the Global Footprint Network on ecological footprint per capita (in global hectares), and Review calculations.
The World Bank groups countries into four income categories: (i) high income, with an average
per capita GDP of around 52,000 dollars PPP; (ii) upper-middle income (average around 17,500
dollars PPP); (iii) lower-middle income (average around 6,800 dollars PPP); and (iv) low income
(average around 2,500 dollars PPP). Table 1 presents the distribution of incomes, population
sizes, and total fertility rates (TFR) across the four groups.49
47 This section is based on A. Dasgupta and Dasgupta (2017).
48 This can be confirmed from Figure 13. Suppose all countries were to enjoy the average income of the world, around 16,000
international dollars. The global ecological footprint would be larger than the sum of the footprints of all countries at the current
distribution of incomes.
49 A region’s total fertility rate (TFR) is the average number of births per woman over her reproductive years (taken to be 15-49). As a
rule of thumb, 2.1 is taken to be the fertility rate at which a region’s population would remain constant in the long run. That is the
‘replacement fertility rate’.
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
35
The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
Table 1 Income and Population Shares
Countries (income; dollars
PPP)
GDP (2019 prices;
trillion)
% global GDP % global
population
Total Fertility
Rate (TFR)
High 64 47 16 1.6
Upper-middle 50 47 37 1.9
Lower-middle 20 15 38 2.8
Low 2 1 9 4.6
Source: World Bank (2020a). Figures rounded.
The figures are revealing. A little over 15% of the world’s population produces nearly 50% of
global GDP, while just under 10% of the world’s population produces 1%. The majority of the
world’s lowest income countries are in sub-Saharan Africa. Comprising around 14% of the
world’s population, the region represents only a bit more than 3% of the world economy.50
Estimates from the Global Footprint Network suggest that sub-Saharan Africa’s ecological
footprint is a mere 6% of the global footprint. So sub-Saharan Africa cannot remotely be
held responsible for the global environmental problems we face today; that responsibility falls
squarely on today’s high income countries and increasingly the lower-middle income and upper-
middle income countries.
8 Addressing the Impact Inequality, 1: Global Consumption
In recent decades, there has been a significant increase in our global demand for provisioning
services, in particular food, timber, fibres, biofuel, and water. This has affected the ability
of ecosystems to provide the regulating and maintenance services on which our economies
ultimately depend. For example, land used for agriculture increased by over 100 million hectares
between 1980 and 2000 across the tropics, with half of this land directly converting the tropical
forests that regulate climate and prevent soil erosion. In our oceans, fishery catch has more than
quadrupled since 1950. Data on our current and predicted future use of provisioning services
of crops, fibre, biofuels, timber, water, fish and aquaculture tell a similar story of escalating
demands. If we are to avoid exceeding the limits of what Nature can provide on a sustainable
basis while still meeting the needs of the human population, consumption and production
patterns will need to be restructured fundamentally.
Food production is the most significant driver of terrestrial biodiversity loss. But humanity
also comes with an entourage. Land is used to produce food for our pets (cats and dogs). A
recent assessment of the demand for pet food found that its production uses 0.8-1.2% of
global agricultural land, which is approximately twice the land area of the UK (Alexander et al.
2020). But that is nothing in comparison with our love of meat products. Livestock in 2016
occupied 3.28 billion hectares of global agricultural land (67%). This figure does not include
the approximately 35% of crop production for livestock feed (Foley et al. 2011). If that were
included, the proportion of agricultural land devoted to livestock would become 77%.51 If
we reckon that agricultural land replaced what were once woodlands and forests, grasslands
and shrubs, wetlands and swamps, and include in our calculation the discharge of waste
accompanying food production and consumption, we begin to appreciate the magnitude of the
tension between our demand for provisioning services, in particular food production, and our
need for regulating and maintenance services.
50 The slight discrepancy between these figures and the corresponding ones in Table 1 is explained by the fact that there are a
handful of lower- and upper-middle income countries in sub-Saharan Africa (e.g. South Africa, Kenya, Namibia and Botswana).
51 See Klein Goldewijk et al. (2017), and Poore and Nemecek (2018).
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
36 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
As the global population grows, the problem of producing sufficient food in a sustainable
manner will only intensify. There is also significant waste (Box 7): as noted earlier, approximately
one-third of food produced is lost or wasted (FAO, 2014, 2019). This is more than just ironic;
even as more than 10% of the world’s population go to bed hungry each day, food remains
under-priced for the wealthy.
Box 7
Food Loss and Waste
Short term macroeconomics fuels profligacy: we are encouraged to consume so as to prevent
the employment rate from falling. There is a need to break the link between consumption
that is damaging of the biosphere and employment, because we know employment improves
well-being (Review Chapter 11). Three major types of footprint of food loss and waste are
quantifiable: greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, pressures on land, and pressures on water.
They all have an impact on biodiversity. Production of food which is never consumed has
significant environmental impact: GHG emissions from the production of lost and wasted
food amount to 8% of total GHG emissions, making food waste the third largest carbon
emitter in the world, behind the US and China (Hanson and Mitchell, 2017).
The extent of food loss and waste along supply chains varies depending on global context:
loss is substantial in handling, storage and transport stages in regions where these are
difficult to achieve. At the global level, approximately one-third of food produced is lost or
wasted (FAO, 2019), that is, a land area the size of India and Canada together is used to
grow food that is never consumed. For aquatic food, post-harvest loss is a particular problem
for small-scale fisheries. Large quantities of fish are lost in transport and storage, especially
where access to electricity for cold storage is a difficulty. Post-harvest losses were estimated at
10% of global capture fishery and aquaculture production in 2005 (Béné et al. 2007).
Meeting environmental objectives by reducing food loss and waste requires an understanding
of not only where food waste occurs in the supply chain, but also the footprints of
commodities that are wasted and the costs of interventions to reduce waste at different
points. To reduce the land footprint, for example, policies need to aim to reduce animal
product waste because 60% of the land footprint of food loss and waste is for livestock
production. Some countries have achieved significant reductions in food waste. In 2015 to
2018, the UK saw a 7% reduction in food waste (480,000 tonnes), mainly through working
in partnership with food retailers and tackling waste at the household stage (WRAP, 2020).
Globally, however, food waste remains gigantic.
9 Addressing the Impact Inequality, 2: Global Population
Global population grew sharply in the years following the mid-20th century, because the
substantial reductions in death rates traceable to advances in medicine and public health
practices were not matched by reductions in fertility rates. Table 1 shows that fertility rates are
lower in richer groups of countries. The table also shows that low income countries, the bulk of
which are in sub-Saharan Africa, stand out for their high fertility rates.52
In 2018, women in sub-Saharan Africa on average have around 4.7 births over the course of a
lifetime, in contrast to a global average of 2.4. Even the latter figure is above the replacement
fertility rate – approximately 2.1. The fertility rate in South Asia differs considerably across
regions: the fertility rate in Bangladesh, which has welcomed voluntary participation in family
52 The remainder of this section owes much to discussions with John Bongaarts, John Cleland, Aisha Dasgupta, Paul Ehrlich, and
Peter Raven.
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
37The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
planning programmes, is today only a bit over 2; in India it has fallen to 2.2, whereas in Pakistan
it is 3.5.53 In contrast, the fertility rate in China today is 1.7.
Recall though that the global ecological footprint depends on the absolute population size.
A population can be stable, but if large it would have a big footprint, other things equal,
and could bring the biosphere into disrepair. That is why the replacement fertility rate is not
as significant a notion of ‘fertility transition’ (the transition from high fertility rates to the
replacement rate) in the economics of biodiversity as it is in demography. The economics of
biodiversity encourages us to look for transitions that dip below the replacement fertility rate
before tending toward it. As Table 1 shows, high income and upper-middle income countries,
seen as groups, display that feature.
Peering into population projections by expert demographers is a necessary exercise in the
economics of biodiversity. The United Nations’ current median projection of world population
in year 2100 is around 10.9 billion, with a 95% certainty range 9.4-12.7 billion (UNPD,
2019). More than three-quarters of the increase from today’s 7.7 billion is expected to be
in sub-Saharan Africa, where population in 2100 is projected to rise from around 1.1 billion
today to 3.8 billion with 95% certainty that it will be in the range 3.0-4.8 billion (Figure 14).
But attempts to raise incomes there, even to the current global average income (approximately
17,000 international dollars), in the face of a near-3 billion rise in numbers, will require an
increase in the region’s annual output from 4.3 trillion international dollars to about 68 trillion
international dollars at today’s prices. That rise, assuming that it is possible, is likely to have
adverse consequences for the region’s ecology, contributing to societal conflicts there and
greater attempted population movements both within the region and out of it (Juma, 2019).
There are alternative projections to those made by the United Nations Population Division
(UNPD). Vollset et al. (2020) have projected global population for 2100 based on two
assumptions that are notably different from UNPD (2019): (i) sharper declines in fertility rates
in countries that have already undergone a fertility transition; and (ii) earlier declines in fertility
rates in low income countries. The authors’ central projection of global population in 2100 is
8.8 billion, with a 95% prediction interval of 6.8-11.8 billion. Their forecast for sub-Saharan
Africa is an increase by approximately 2 billion from today’s 1.1 billion, which is fewer by 700
million than the median projection in UNPD (2019). As a median global population of 8.8 billion
in 2100 is lower than even the lower bound of 9.4 billion in UNPD’s 95% prediction interval, the
publication created much media interest.
In fact, differences between the two sets of projections for global population become significant
only after 2070. Until then, there is less than 5% difference between the two.54 And that matters
far more than their differences for 2100. Nature responds to the demands we make of it, it does
not calculate rates of change in demands, nor rates of change of rates of change in demands.
When ecosystems tip over into unproductive states, the shift cannot usually be reversed (in
exceptional circumstances it can be, but only at great cost). Globally, if a few more planetary
boundaries (Annex 1) are breached by year 2070, differences in population projections for year
2100 will count for little.
The SDGs are reticent about population, and yet it is difficult to imagine that they can be
regarded to be sustainable without addressing the subject (given the role population plays in
our demands on Nature), even if the target year was to be postponed a decade or more beyond
2030. It has been argued that the goal to restrict the increase in mean global temperature to
2°C from that in the pre-industrial revolution era is unlikely to be met unless population growth
53 In 1970 (i.e. before the partition of Pakistan into two states), the total fertility rate was high in both Bangladesh and Pakistan – 6.9
in Bangladesh and 6.6 in Pakistan – but by 2000 it had dropped to 3.2 in Bangladesh but was 5.0 in Pakistan (A. Dasgupta, 2020).
For further discussion of the role family planning played in reducing birth rates in Bangladesh, see Review (Chapter 9).
54 We are grateful to Patrick Gerland of the United Nations Population Division for clarifying this for us.
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
38 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
is reduced substantially (O’Neill et al. 2010), and yet even the recent 2015 Paris Agreement on
climate change made no mention of population, nor of the lack of family planning facilities for
many of the world’s poorest women. Today, less than 1% of international aid from the EU to
Africa is devoted to family planning. Box 8 collates what is known of the magnitude of unmet
need for family planning.
Figure 14 Total Population Size by Region, Estimates and Projections, 1950 to 2100
Source: UNPD (2019).
Box 8
Family Planning and Reproductive Health
Over the years, female education has been seen by development experts as the surest route
to women’s empowerment, including choice over fertility. All governments recognise the
importance of women’s education for empowering women, yet even today around 30% of
females between 15 and 24 years of age in low income countries are illiterate (World Bank,
2020a). Family planning and reproductive health programmes, in contrast, are affordable by
governments even in low income countries. They offer an effective route for governments
to empower women (they are what today many would call a ‘low-hanging fruit’); yet they
remain low on the development agenda. It is a paradox.
By providing access to subsidised contraceptive commodities and services, family planning
and reproductive health programmes were successful in accelerating fertility declines in East
Asia and Latin America in the 1960s to 1980s. Cleland et al. (2006) estimated that their
promotion in countries with high fertility rates had the potential to avert more than 30% of
maternal deaths and nearly 10% of childhood deaths. The rationale for vigorously expanding
the content and reach of such programmes today also lies in the more than 215 million
women in developing, mainly low income, countries who have reported they want to prevent
pregnancy but are not using modern contraception. Among them, over 150 million use no
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
39The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
method of contraception and nearly 65 million rely on traditional methods (UNPD 2020). The
Guttmacher Institute (2020) estimated that there were some 110 million pregnancies in low
and middle income countries annually that were unintended. The institute also estimated
that if all unmet needs for modern contraception were satisfied in developing countries, there
would be a nearly 70% decline in unintended pregnancies, amounting to around 35 million
a year. Meeting unmet needs for contraception would reduce pregnancy-related deaths by
70,000. Many unintended pregnancies end in abortion, a significant proportion of which are
performed under unsafe conditions.
In addition to reducing unintended pregnancies, use of contraceptives among women
enhances their own health and that of their children by spacing births and providing greater
opportunity for education. Guttmacher Institute (2020) estimated that more than 2.5 million
infants in low and middle income countries die each year in the first month of life. Access
to community-based modern family planning and reproductive health programmes is a
means for women to have greater control over their lives and for improving the chance of
having healthy babies. If the benefits of modern family planning and reproductive health
programmes are high, the costs are low. By one estimate (Guttmacher Institute, 2020),
expanding and improving services to meet women’s needs for modern contraception
in developing countries would cost under US$2 a year per person. As routes to fertility
transitions, investment in community-based family planning and reproductive health
programmes should now be regarded as essential.55
10 Environmental Externalities
Why and how have we come to over-extend our demands on the biosphere to such an extent?
One set of explanations, much studied in recent years by environmental economists, focuses
on human short-sightedness and our inability to choose actions that are in our own personal
interests. Behavioural psychology has studied and confirmed systematic biases in our reading
of the world and in the personal choices we make – the goods we consume and the risks we
take (Box 11).
The findings are illuminating, but they do not help to explain why our overshoot has increased
so rapidly in recent decades, to the point where some parts of the biosphere have tipped
over into unproductive ecosystems and some parts are probably not far from tipping points
(Annex 1). In order to have an uncluttered problem to examine, we therefore imagine that
people are capable of reasoning judiciously. The problem then is to explain why reasoned
choices at the individual level can nevertheless result in a massive failure of collective reasoning.
For that, we look into features of the biosphere that create the dissonance.
As noted earlier, mobility, invisibility, and silence are pervasive features of regulating and
maintenance services. That makes it difficult for others to observe or verify the use someone
makes of them or what that someone does, perhaps inadvertently, to weaken them. Property
rights to Nature’s processes are thus difficult to define and difficult to enforce even when they
have been instituted. By property rights we do not only mean private rights, we include collective
rights (e.g. community rights and state rights). The inability of societies to honour property
rights even when they can be defined gives rise to externalities, which are the unaccounted-for
consequences for others, including future people, of actions taken by one or more persons.
The qualifier ‘unaccounted-for’ means that the consequences in question follow without prior
engagement with those who are affected, or without due consideration for future people.
Environmental externalities, for that is what we are focusing on here, are prevalent because we
do not have to pay for many of our biosphere’s services. Being free, we demand too much; that
55 Of the many publications that have reported the benefits that family planning services provide to poor households, see especially
Cleland et al. (2006), Bongaarts (2011, 2016), Miller and Babiarz (2016), and Guttmacher Institute (2020).
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
40 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
is, we demand more than is in our collective interest. In Box 9, we confirm, moreover, that some
ecosystem goods and services come not at zero price but at a negative price. Put simply, it pays
to exploit the biosphere, and government subsidies play a part in that.
Box 9
Nature Subsidies
Governments almost everywhere amplify adverse environmental externalities by paying people
more to exploit the biosphere than they do to protect it. These payments have been called
perverse subsidies. Examples include subsidies to agriculture, water, fossil fuels, fisheries,
energy and fertilisers. These subsidies encourage over-extraction and harvesting of the
biosphere. Government subsidies for exploiting Nature are extensive in size. Recent estimates
suggest that direct subsidies that are harmful to biodiversity total around US$500 billion per
year, and when taking into account environmental externalities, the conservative estimate of
the total cost of subsidies is much larger, at around US$4 to US$6 trillion globally per year
for the sectors mentioned above (OECD, 2017b; Andres et al. 2019; Coady et al. 2019).
The figures dwarf the size of public finance devoted to conservation and restoration and
sustainable use of the biosphere. For example, domestic public finance associated with the
conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity totals around US$68 billion per year globally
(OECD, 2020). Estimates of aggregate finance flows toward biodiversity (including those from
both public and private sources) range from around US$78 billion to US$143 billion per year
(equivalent to around 0.1% of global nominal GDP in 2019)56 (Review, Chapters 8 and 20).
Two types of externalities may be contrasted: unidirectional and reciprocal. We introduce
them, and then review various types of institutions that societies have created to reduce them
(Sections 11-13).
Figure 15 Reciprocal and Unidirectional Externalities
56 See Deutz et al. (2020) and OECD (2020).
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
41The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
10.1 Unidirectional Externalities
An externality is unidirectional when an agent (or a group of agents) inflicts an unaccounted-
for damage or confers an unaccounted-for benefit on another (or others). An example of
unidirectional harm is a company discharging toxic chemicals into waterways; an example of
a unidirectional benefit is the protection enjoyed by downstream dwellers against landslides
afforded by the wooded property of the landowner upstream.
Unidirectional externalities find their greatest expression in our engagements with our
descendants. To explain, consider that our consumption levels affect what we are able to leave
behind for them. It is customary to argue that people have a right to judge for themselves how
much to save for their children, that parents are in any case best placed to reach answers to that
question.57 The argument runs as follows: people care about their children, and know that their
children in turn will care about their grandchildren, that their grandchildren in turn will care
about their great-grandchildren, and so on. By recursive reasoning, thoughtful parents would
care about all their descendants. So, when parents reflect on how much they should bequeath
to their children, they are guided by all their descendants’ well-being. Voluntary participation in
free and fair markets would enable parents to express that extended care, while relying on their
own resources.
One problem with the argument (there are other problems as well) is that even if parents are
able to internalise the well-being of their own descendants, they would not take into account
the positive externalities they confer on, nor the negative externalities they inflict on, other
parents and their descendants. As so many of our biosphere’s regulating and maintenance
services are free, each one of us experiences (even if at an unconscious level) an urge to exploit
them at rates that, from the perspective of our collective good, are too high.58 And that
amounts to each one of us discounting the benefits and burdens of our descendants at rates
we would not countenance were we able to choose them collectively. Rates of discount in the
market are therefore too high; accounting rates of interest – they are often called social rates
of discount – would be lower. Economists point to an absence of adequate property rights to
natural capital as the source of the problem.
10.2 Reciprocal Externalities
Under reciprocal externalities, each party inflicts an unaccounted-for harm or confers an
unaccounted-for benefit on all others in a population. The population could be as small as a
village community or as large as the world. One example of mutual harm is the carbon emissions
of every household today; another is the biodiversity loss caused by our activities. An example
of a mutual benefit would be the flip side, which would take place if nations undertook to fulfil
their commitments to reduce carbon emissions or biodiversity loss. Gordon (1954) famously
wrote that an asset that belongs to everyone belongs to no one. Hardin (1968) even more
famously spoke of the “tragedy of the commons” to describe what can happen to a resource
to which access is free. Because users are not charged nor required to limit their use, everyone
uses it excessively.59 This is not simply market failure, it is institutional failure writ large. When
governments are unable to agree on ways to ensure that commitments they have made on
reducing carbon emissions are complied with, it is a sign of failure in international governance;
it is not market failure.
57 There are exceptions to this argument of course, investment in education being one.
58 Anthropologists have observed that children consume meals at a faster rate when eating from a common plate than when eating
from individual plates.
59 What prevents us from depleting free resources immediately are the personal costs of extraction. On this, see Dasgupta, Mitra, and
Sorger (2019).
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
42 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
Reduction in the prospective damage from climate change and biodiversity loss is akin to the
production of public goods, which are neither rivalrous (access to a public good by any one
group of people has no effect on the quantity available to others) nor excludable (no one can
be excluded from access to the good). Markets would be expected to offer very little in the way
of incentives for individuals in their private capacity to supply public goods: the benefit from
supplying them would be shared with everyone, while the entire cost of production would be
borne by the supplier. The term ‘free riding’ expresses the phenomenon exactly. That is why
governments are urged by economists to reduce harmful externalities using pollution taxes,
resource extraction fees, even prohibitions (e.g. establishing Protected Areas; issuing a fixed
number of tradeable permits to pollute; and so on).
Globally, public goods appear in the form of such regulating and maintenance services as are
embodied, for example, in the climate system. The ecosystems supplying those public goods
differ from one another, which means different remedies are required if their supply is to
improve. Consider that the world’s rainforests are a seat of global public goods but fall within
national jurisdictions. They thereby give rise to unidirectional externalities. If we are to preserve
the world’s rainforests, the global community should be prepared to pay the nations harbouring
them to do that. In contrast, the world’s oceans beyond the 200-mile exclusive economic zones
are global public goods but are open access resources, giving rise to reciprocal externalities.
Protection of the oceans should therefore be subject to international control (e.g. global taxation
on ocean fisheries and transportation; extensions of Protected Areas, and so on). The public
finances in the two cases would be different, but they could be made to relate to one another.
The revenue collected from global fisheries and marine transportation could, for example, be
used to cover, if only partially, the international payment for the protection of rainforests. In Part
II, we explore the idea of a Global Marshall Plan for protecting the biosphere and, by extension,
our prosperity and well-being also.
Box 10
Externalities and Rights
Although the failure to establish and protect property rights has traditionally been at the
heart of the economics of externalities, the language of rights sits awkwardly there.60 We
are speaking of fundamental rights, not rights assigned to people or organisations because
they are instrumental in advancing human well-being. But even fundamental rights need to
be justified. As elsewhere in the economics of biodiversity, trade-offs have to be weighed if
actions are to be judged. Rights short-circuit those complexities.
Perhaps the most striking, as well as the most sensitive, sphere where rights would seem to
clash is reproduction. The 1994 International Conference on Population and Development
reaffirmed the language of rights in the sphere of family planning and reproductive health.
The Conference’s conclusions read:
“Reproductive rights … rest on the recognition of the basic right of all couples and
individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing, and timing of their children,
and to have information and means to do so, and the right to attain the highest standards of
sexual and reproductive health.” (UNFPA, 1995: Chapter 7, Section 3)61
The qualifier ‘responsibly’ could be read as requiring couples to take into account the
adverse environmental externalities their reproductive decisions may give rise to; but that
60 The material in this Box has been taken from A. Dasgupta and Dasgupta (2017).
61 Moral philosophers would argue that the evaluation of family planning programmes should include the quality of lives that will
not be lived on account of the programmes. We avoid those difficult problems by assuming that thoughtful parents reach their
fertility desires by taking into account the potential well-being of their offspring and, by recursion, the well-being of their dynasty.
On this and related matters in population ethics, see Dasgupta (2019).
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
43The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
probably would be a stretched reading. Certainly, writings affirming the UN declaration have
interpreted the passage and its intent more narrowly. For example, the fundamental right of
individuals “to decide freely and for themselves whether, when, and how many children to
have” is central to the vision and goals of Family Planning 2020 (FP2020). It is also pivotal in
the reproductive health indicators of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. In this vision,
information and other services pertaining to family planning and reproductive health are
rights, as is choosing one’s family size. But it is not clear that the two sets of rights have the
same force.
Rights are peremptory, which is why they are problematic. One way to overcome the problem
is to place them in a hierarchy. That was the conclusion Rawls (1971) famously reached when
framing his principles of justice.62 But if note is taken of adverse externalities accompanying
a person’s actions, it is by no means clear whose rights are to trump. Which is why the
language of rights sits awkwardly in the economics of biodiversity. In a world where the
Impact Inequality holds, and holds strongly, it may seem reasonable to insist on the rights of
future generations when an appeal is made to curb our impact on the biosphere. Sen (1982:
346), for example, has likened persistent pollutants to instruments of oppression: “Lasting
pollution is a kind of calculable oppression of the future generation.” But if additional births
can be expected to contribute further to the discharge of persistent pollutants, why do a
couple’s reproductive rights trump the rights of future people not to be oppressed? That is
the kind of ethical dilemma the language of reproductive rights misses.63
11 Socially Embedded Preferences
The previous section described externalities that travel in the material world. In fact, externalities
are embedded in a larger space. The social world can be as powerful a carrier of externalities
as the material environment. A common form in which they appear in the social world is in the
way our relationships influence our preferences and wants. This is cause for hope that transitions
to sustainable development are possible and with lower human costs than may be feared.
Conceptions of human behaviour that inform the economic models in use by government
ministries view human agency as egoistic. In some aspects of behaviour we are surely that,
but in other aspects we are socially embedded: we look to others when acting. Even in the
latter, our motivation is not uniform. In some spheres of life we are competitive, in others
we are conformists. The economics of biodiversity remains seriously incomplete when our
innate sociability is not acknowledged; nor is policy well informed when we neglect our social
embeddedness.64 That consumption is the activity around which human relationships are built
and maintained has been found time and again by historians and anthropologists in their
studies of traditional societies. Feasts to mark occasions of significance (birth, puberty, marriage,
death, harvests, and the annual renewal that is spring) are a recurrent theme in their writings.
The epic poems of Homer and Vyasa are full of it. There is hardly a book in the Odyssey that
does not have a line-after-line description of the roasting, carving, and communal eating of
meat and drinking of wine. And no opportunity is lost in the Mahabharata for describing the
extravagance with which the king entertains his kinsmen and guests to mark a sacrifice to the
gods or to celebrate the establishment of a capital for his kingdom.
62 In contrast, the 30 Articles in the United Nations’ Declaration of Human Rights are not placed in a hierarchy. Blackburn (2001) uses
the UN Declaration to demonstrate the weaknesses inherent in rights-based ethics.
63 In recognisably exceptional circumstances, governments resolve the dilemma by creating a hierarchy of rights. In the current
COVID-19 pandemic, many governments have insisted that the right not to be infected by others trumps the individual right to do as
we please when it comes to wearing masks and keeping safe distance from our friends.
64 A modern classic on the way others influence us and we influence others is Cialdini (1984).
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
44 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
Historians of consumption are aware that the act of eating food communally has been a
salient feature of societies everywhere, and that feasts have bound societies together since time
immemorial. What contemporary historians have sought to understand are the societal changes
that led to the democratisation of eating meals together beyond the household unit. The
feasts described in epic poetry are enjoyed only by the aristocrats; we are told nothing of how
common people celebrated special occasions. The modern historian, in contrast, is at pains to
understand the growth of inns, cafes and restaurants in the general development of societies in
the West since the late Middle Ages and Early-Modern times.
To date, socially embedded preferences have been uncovered mainly by historians, sociologists,
and social and behavioural psychologists. What we have from social historians are narratives
on the formation of tastes and changes in consumption practices over time (Trentmann, 2012,
2016); and what we have from large-scale surveys on stated happiness and life satisfaction is
confirmation that our place relative to others matters to us (Review, Chapter 11).
The classic study of competitive preferences was Veblen (1925), who wrote of ‘conspicuous
consumption’ to understand the Gilded Age among America’s 19th century economic barons.
That competitive preferences over consumption patterns leads to socially excessive consumption
is well known, as evidenced by the term ‘consumerism’, which carries with it a pejorative note.
People acknowledge the force of the ‘rat races’ they join in search of consumption experiences.
Getting ahead of ‘the Jones’s’ is a familiar expression. Competition can also drive consumption
that is less degrading of the biosphere, for example in demand for more energy efficient
appliances or electric cars.
Conformist preferences are different. They reflect the desire on our part to be like others,
neither above nor below them. Conformism can direct us to be profligate, but we would be
profligate only because others are profligate. So it may be difficult empirically to distinguish the
two explanations for profligacy – competitiveness and conformism. Nevertheless, conformism
is distinct from competitiveness. One reason is that if we were conformists we would be frugal
in our consumption practices if others were frugal. Each practice – profligacy, frugality – could
be held together by its own bootstraps, so to speak. So there is indeterminacy in the emergent
behaviour in a society of conformists. That indeterminacy gives substance to a common
observation that consumption patterns in the affluent West are wasteful, and worse, that they
damage biodiversity and thereby our own wealth and well-being – the thought being that our
practices have evolved in a socially damaging way. But the indeterminacy also offers hope that
reductions in those forms of consumption that are damaging of the biosphere may cost far
less in psychological terms than they would were the human person an egoist in all manners
of consumption.
Fertility practices also are not influenced solely by private desires and wants, they are also shaped
by societal mores. Reproductive behaviour is conformist when the family size a household
desires conforms to the average family size in the community or, more broadly, in the world that
households come into contact with. So long as all others aim at large families, no household will
wish to deviate from the practice; if, however, all other households were to restrict their fertility,
every household would wish to restrict its fertility. A society can thus get embedded in a self-
sustaining mode of behaviour characterised by high fertility and stagnant living standards, even
when there is another potentially self-sustaining mode of behaviour that is characterised by low
fertility and rising living standards and which is preferred by all (Dasgupta and Dasgupta, 2017).
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
45The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
Figure 16 Socially Embedded Preferences
A study of contraceptive use in rural Kenya found that in communities with dense social
networks and a poorly developed market economy, a woman would be unlikely to use
contraceptive methods if contraception use in her network was low, whereas she would be
likely to use such methods if contraception use in her network was high (Kohler, Behrman,
and Watkins, 2001). Further support has been provided in a recent analysis of contraceptive
uptake in Bangladesh (Munshi and Myaux, 2006). The study concerned women living in the
same community but belonging to different religious groups. After controlling for individual
differences in education, age, wealth, and the like, the study found that a woman’s choice to
use contraception depended strongly on the predominant choice made by other women in her
religious group and was unaffected by the predominant choice made by women belonging
to the other group. Family planning programmes that encourage community discussions
on contraception and fertility preferences enable and empower women to both make and
coordinate their choices.
Box 11
Behavioural Biases
Over the years behavioural psychologists have uncovered a number of systematic biases our
choices are prone to. The biases on their own do not reflect socially embedded preferences
– they are simply biases in the way we absorb information and respond to them. For
example, the way choices are framed influences what we choose, so default options can have
a powerful effect in shifting behaviour – referred to as ‘nudging’ (Thaler and Sunstein, 2008).
Researchers have found that even when people say they would like to use a green energy
supplier, few do (Reisch and Sunstein, 2016). However, when a green energy supply was
made the default, 69% of people in a trial of approximately 40,000 households ended up
with one, compared to only 7% when it was not the default option (Ebeling and Lotz, 2015).
To cite another example, hotels today routinely offer customers the default option of not
requiring their bathroom towels to be changed each day.
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
46 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
Nudging people to do one thing rather than another can also be achieved through changing
the environment in which people make their decisions. This includes cues in the physical
environment, such as size, availability and position of objects or stimuli. For example,
researchers have found when higher proportions of healthy and vegetarian cafeteria meals
were made available, calorie intake and meat consumption were both reduced (Pechey
et al. 2019).65
12 Technology and Institutions
Technology and institutions together influence the efficiency with which we are able to convert
the biosphere’s supply of goods and services into final products. They also influence the
biosphere’s ability to supply goods and services on a sustainable basis (e.g. bioengineering).
12.1 Synergies and Disharmonies
That institutions and technology influence one another is a commonplace observation.
Institutions define the incentives that people have to do one thing rather than another, and
incentives shape the production, dissemination and use of knowledge. A state that invests
vigorously in life-saving technology and then applies it is able to transform society for the better.
Likewise, technological possibilities shape institutions. Advances in mapping the geographical
spread of natural capital and in methods to monitor its use can help enforce property
rights. History is rife with examples where institutions and technology have influenced one
another beneficially.
That each can be made at least partially to mitigate the other’s failure has also been widely
noted. Although degradation of the biosphere is frequently traced to institutional failure, people
often express hope that progress in science and technology can put things right. The economics
of climate change has encouraged that thought by focusing on the development of cheap
renewable energy sources as substitutes for fossil fuels. Nature-saving technology – for example,
substituting degradable waste for persistent pollutants and decarbonising the energy sector –
are one class of ways in which technology can raise the efficiency with which the biosphere’s
goods and services are converted into final products. Institutional changes, such as improving
the character and enforcement of property rights to natural resources points to another class of
ways in which that efficiency can be raised. Establishing Protected Areas to conserve ecosystems;
imposing pollution taxes or outright prohibitions; and removal of subsidies on resource
extraction and agricultural production; are another class of institutional changes that can be
brought about by public policy. Changes in behavioural norms, such as those that lead to a
reduction in food waste, are yet another avenue (Section 19).
But there are problems. The incentives entrepreneurs have for developing technology are shaped
by the systems of property rights in place. Entrepreneurs understandably innovate with a view
to lessening the need for expensive factors of production, not cheap ones. We should then not
be surprised that modern technologies are rapacious in their use of the biosphere’s goods and
services, many of which have a zero or even negative price. Remarkable post-war developments
in sonar technology and advances in the technology for harvesting fish came about in large
measure because ocean fisheries beyond national jurisdiction are free. Unbridled application
of modern technology (e.g. the chainsaw) in clearing tropical rainforests has been made
possible because governments have permitted it at a small price. Both forms of environmental
destruction would have been avoided had institutions not failed. There is nothing good or bad
65 It may be that what appears as irrational behaviour today has its roots in rational responses to problems our distant ancestors
faced; that is, our behavioural biases may be relics of survival strategies in the distant past. For an exploration of this line of thinking
for understanding the time-varying discount rates we humans have been found to deploy in our saving behaviour, see Dasgupta and
Maskin (2005).
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
47The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
about technology per se. It is the use to which it is put that affects the efficiency with which we
are able to convert the biosphere’s goods and services into final products.
Box 12
Genetically Modified Crops
Changing the biological capabilities of crops offers the possibility of using marginal land
for production, improving crop resistance to pathogens, obtaining higher yield on existing
farmland, and enhancing nutritional quality. Genetically modified crops remain controversial,
even though prominent scientific bodies such as the Nuffield Council on Bioethics
(NCB, 2003) continue to affirm their salience in a world with growing food needs.66
There are numerous examples of how classic genetic modification and the newer, faster, and
more precise technique of gene editing with CRISPR/Cas9 have conferred desirable traits on
crops. One important example of transformational crop change through genetic engineering
relates to rice: changing its primary metabolism to increase yield dramatically (C4 rice). As rice
makes up some 20% of global calorie intake, improvements to its growth efficiency have
far-reaching consequences (Elert, 2014). Plants can carry out photosynthesis using a basic
C3 or C4 molecule; the C4 route is much more efficient. Yields of species currently using C3
photosynthesis would be considerably higher if they could be re-engineered to use C4. Rice
is currently a C3 plant, but a global research consortium has been working since 2009 to
introduce genes from maize and change its photosynthetic pathway to C4. The researchers
estimate that rice yields could be improved by up to 50%, and that water use efficiency could
be doubled (Rizal et al. 2012; Ermakova et al. 2019).
12.2 Our Bounded Economy
Contemporary conceptions of economic possibilities acknowledge that the biosphere is of finite
size, capable of producing only a limited flow of goods and services. But they encourage the
thought that if institutions are designed so as to create the right incentives, human ingenuity
can overcome the bounds of a finite Earth. Formal models of macroeconomic growth assume
that substitution possibilities between produced capital goods and technological advances can
enable us to pursue economic growth indefinitely.
The economics of climate change and international negotiations over carbon emissions would
seem to have gone further. There is an implicit suggestion there that GDP growth is the only
viable route for (i) reducing carbon emissions, (ii) eliminating global poverty, and (iii) ensuring
that development is sustainable.67 That stance has given rise to a paradox: growth in global
output is seen as necessary for providing the funds that will be needed for reducing our
ecological footprint, even though the ways growth in global output have been achieved are
known to increase the footprint.68
Our footprint is not only of the material we take from the biosphere but also the transformed
material we deposit into it. What is requisitioned for human use has to be returned. The
macroeconomic models of growth and development in use in economic and finance ministries
and Planning Commissions, however, do not acknowledge that material must balance – from
source to sink. Persistent pollutants such as plastics (bags and containers), nylon (fishing nets
66 Zilberman, Holland, and Trilnick (2018) is an excellent summary statement.
67 That would also appear to be the implicit assumption underlying the UN’s SDGs (Box 1).
68 Visions of a prosperous world in which Nature plays no part continue to thrive. Criticising the young climate activist Greta
Thunberg for her speech at the United Nations in September 2019, the economics editor of Sky News wrote in The Times
(27 September 2019: p. 30): “Eternal economic growth is not a phrase one spits out in derision; it’s precisely what we should be
aiming for.”
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
48 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
and synthetic textiles), toxic chemicals (insecticides and pesticides), and metals and minerals
(iron sulphide, mercury compounds) provide examples of waste that have adverse consequences
for the soils and water bodies. Even (perhaps, especially!) biodegradable waste has to be
accounted for. It does not do to imagine that if waste is biodegradable it leaves no footprint.
If we overload Nature with such waste, the process of decomposition alters the biota, and that
compromises other ecosystem services. Pharmaceuticals such as antibiotics and fashion products
such as cosmetics contaminate the soils and water bodies. They have an adverse effect on the
food we eat, the water we drink, and the air we breathe. Chemical fertilisers and waste from
livestock emerge at the other end of farm production as waste, causing nutrient overload in
streams and water bodies, disrupting the nitrogen cycle. Even the carbon dioxide emitted by our
economies is a biodegradable waste: it is absorbed by primary producers for photosynthesis.
But an overload compromises the ability of the biosphere to regulate climate. Global climate
change will increasingly be a major cause of biodiversity loss (Lovejoy and Hannah, 2019).
That will compromise the functional integrity of ecosystems. Rising concentration of carbon in
the atmosphere is thus expected to bring about a chain of events that will radically alter the
biosphere’s workings. Regulating and maintenance services will move out of the bounds within
which our economies and physiologies have evolved.69
Technological advances are taken in contemporary conceptions of economic growth to serve
as the engine of economic growth. But those advances require investment in research and
development. The conceptions carry with them the belief that even when GDP growth propels
economies to higher and higher standards of living, further technological advances will require
vanishing quantities of Nature’s goods and services. The underlying assumption is that humanity
will in the long run be able to break free of the biosphere. It is imagined that we are external to
Nature. The Review develops the economics of biodiversity on an understanding that humanity
is embedded in Nature. That viewpoint can be shown to imply that the human economy is
bounded. The Review (Chapters 4 and 4*) appeals to ecological principles to argue that the
efficiency with which the biosphere’s goods and services can be transformed into our final
goods and services will prove to be bounded no matter how ingenious we happen to be. We
have to acknowledge that, if we are to reverse the Impact Inequality.
Models are now urgently needed that follow the ecological principles outlined in the global
economic model in the Review (Chapter 4*), including data on natural capital. Empirical
estimations of such models are needed to address the question of whether, and for how long,
the redirection of consumption and investment that is now required is compatible with global
GDP growth in the immediate future. The evidence presented in Section 5 implies that the
possibility of global GDP growth generated by activities that cause depreciation of natural assets
for an indefinite period into the future is highly unlikely. As does evidence that we have left the
safety zones defining two of the nine planetary boundaries identified by scientists (Rockström et
al. 2009) and are perilously close to leaving the safety zone of two further boundaries (Annex 1).
Protection and restoration of the biosphere should now be a priority; otherwise the global
footprint will continue to increase.
Making forecasts of technological progress involves peering into an uncertain future. In order to
identify desirable reforms to contemporary institutions, it pays to look instead for pointers within
our experience. In the following two sections we study the character of local institutions that
have been found to reduce externalities.
69 On an example of the latter – the effect of climate change on our sporting abilities – see Smith et al. (2016).
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
49The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
Figure 17 The Economy is Embedded in the Biosphere
13 Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES)
For unidirectional externalities, payments by beneficiaries to those holding property rights to
ecosystems is an arrangement resembling market operations. Named ‘Payments for Ecosystem
Services’ (PES), the underlying idea is simple enough. The Amazon rainforest is recognised as
Earth’s lungs. If the government in Brazil is convinced that razing the Amazon is necessary for
economic development in the country, should the rest of the world not pay an annual fee to
Brazil to protect the forest? If a wetland on a landowner’s range is a sanctuary for migratory
birds, shouldn’t bird lovers pay the landowner not to drain it for other uses? The cases
here involve ecosystems that produce a public good but are located in private jurisdictions.
PES involves negotiations, so it is not like customers accepting prices in the supermarket.
PES is based on the principle that beneficiaries of ecosystem services should pay to preserve and
restore them. The systems have been much influenced by the fact that landowners manage
their property in ways that are not necessarily (perhaps not even usually) compatible with the
provision of ecosystem services. Modern agricultural practices are a notable example (Section 2).
Designers of PES systems therefore grapple with finding ways in which landowners and land
managers are to be compensated for providing those services.
As the tropics are rich in biodiversity and many of the world’s poorest countries are in
the tropics, it has been a natural thought to build PES programmes among low income
communities. A PES system in which the state plays a positive role is attractive for wildlife
conservation and habitat preservation. Property rights to grasslands, tropical forests, coastal
wetlands, mangroves, and coral reefs are often ambiguous in low income countries. The state
may lay claim to the assets (‘public property’ being the customary euphemism), but if the terrain
is difficult to monitor, inhabitants who continue to reside there can be expected to live off its
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
50 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
products. Inhabitants are therefore key players. Without their engagement, the ecosystems
could not be protected. Meanwhile flocks of tourists visit the sites on a regular basis. An obvious
thing for the state to do is to tax tourists and use the revenue to pay local inhabitants to protect
their landscape from poaching and free-riding. Local inhabitants would then have an incentive
to develop rules and regulations to protect the site. An alternative would be to hand over the
right to charge tourists to the local inhabitants themselves.
There are two aspects of especial interest in PES systems in low income countries. One is its
contribution to poverty reduction, the other to biodiversity conservation. Unfortunately, the
findings are mixed on both counts (Zilberman, Lipper, and McCarthy, 2008; Pattanayak, Wunder,
and Ferraro, 2010). There are situations where the system would be bad for poverty reduction
and distributive justice. Many of the rural poor in low income countries enjoy Nature’s services
from assets they do not own. Even though they may be willing to participate in a system of
property rights in which they are required to pay for ecosystem services provided by landowners
(as Pagiola, Rios, and Arcenas (2008) reported in their careful study of a silvo-pastoral project
in Nicaragua), it could be that the economically weaker among them are made to pay a
disproportionate amount. Some may even become worse off than they were previously. One
could argue that in those situations the state should pay the resource owner instead, using
funds obtained from general taxation. Who should pay depends on the context.
Box 13
Experience With PES Programmes
PES programmes differ in the types and scale of the demand for ecosystem services, the
payment source (i.e. who makes the payment), the type of activity for which payment is
made, the measure used to judge the quality of the service for which payment is made, and
of course the size of the payment. The effectiveness of a PES programme depends crucially on
its design.
In one variant, as in the case of CAMPFIRE in Zimbabwe, the state awards inhabitants of an
ecosystem (e.g. an open range in the savannah) the right to charge for the services it provides
those who are interested (safari for eco-tourists). In another variant, the state pays restoration
costs for the benefit of citizens. The now-revived Ganga Action Plan of the Government of
India to restore the river Ganges is an example. The Colombian government’s policy to pay
for the conservation of biodiverse forest to maintain natural capital and enhance livelihoods
post-conflict is yet another example.
Then there are variants at smaller scales. The Trumpington Meadows development, involving
a local chapter of the Wildlife Trust (an NGO), local farmers, and property developers on
the southern fringe of Cambridge (UK), has established 1,200 new homes while creating
a Nature reserve that spans 60 hectares – 80% of which constitutes wildflower meadows.
New species have already colonised the Nature reserve, while some of the species present
prior to development can still be found in the new meadows. In still another variant, a
concerned citizen initiates a Trust to which individuals and government contribute to restore
an ecosystem of value to local people. Just two kilometres from New Zealand’s Houses of
Parliament, Zealandia – a conservation project covering 225 hectares – has reintroduced
over 20 species of native wildlife, some of which have been absent from mainland New
Zealand for more than 100 years. In addition to providing a space in which city-dwellers can
easily experience their surrounding natural environment, Zealandia’s example has spawned
numerous community conservation initiatives (Lynch, 2019).
And then there are examples where a farmer unilaterally ‘wilds’ their land so as to provide
ecosystem services (carbon capture and wildlife experiences), financed in part by government
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
51The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
subsidy and in part by tourists.70 In each of these examples, it is the beneficiary who pays
for the ecosystem service. That could seem a trite observation, but the law could in principle
have been so designed that suppliers of ecosystem services are required to pay potential
beneficiaries if the services are not provided!
Today, there are literally hundreds of PES schemes around the globe. China, Costa Rica, and
Mexico, for example, have initiated large-scale programmes in which landowners receive
payment for furthering biodiversity conservation, carbon sequestration, landscape amenities,
and hydrological services. These are multiple objectives, and in practice a PES system may
have to be designed to target more than one. That creates problems. A system could be
aimed at reducing fragmentation of an ecosystem but has to check that it does not lead
to an increase in disease transmission among populations; it could be aimed to improve a
habitat for birds even while increasing the watershed’s supply of other ecosystem services; its
purpose could be to increase both carbon sequestration and hydrological services; it could be
designed to reduce local poverty while promoting Nature conservation; and so on. Multiple
goals add to design challenges.71
14 Common Pool Resources (CPRs)
Ecosystem size matters. The atmosphere as a sink for pollution embraces all humanity; it is a
global common. In contrast, a grazing field is typically contained within the perimeters of a
village’s jurisdiction. The economics of climate change has explored institutional arrangements
that are potentially available for curbing carbon emissions. They all involve nations as
players.72 In contrast, it is possible, even desirable, for the inhabitants themselves to manage
geographically confined ecosystems. One reason is that it is a lot easier to institute community
fines (even social sanctions) for overusing village grazing fields or rainforest patches than it
is for governments to set a tax on them. Fewer jurisdictions are involved in negotiations and
monitoring people’s activities is much easier when it is undertaken by community members
themselves than when it is undertaken by a government official sent from outside. Moreover,
knowledge of the local ecology is held by those who work on, and live in and around, the
commons. Local participatory democracy offers a mechanism by which that knowledge can
inform the way resources are used. Taken together, they suggest that as the basis of cooperation
over the use of a geographically confined ecosystem, mutual enforcement would be more
reliable than enforcement by external agencies such as governments.
Confirming this is not easy. In an exceptional study on the quality of forest management in the
central Himalayas, Somanathan, Prabhakar, and Mehta (2005, 2009) used satellite images and
field surveys on what was a natural experiment in governance to find that crown cover was no
less in places that were governed by village councils than it was in areas managed by the state,
but expenditure on governance was an order of magnitude higher in the latter. The authors also
reported that relative to unmanaged commons, crown cover in broad-leaved forests was higher
in village-managed commons, but was not appreciably different in pine forests. It did not go
un-noted by the authors that under the user rules, broad-leaved forests provided more benefits
to community members than pine forests. As in any management problem, individual incentives
and monitoring costs matter.73
70 In her book, Wilding, Isabella Tree provides a vivid account of the way she transformed her agricultural farm into a Nature reserve
(Tree, 2018).
71 Perrings (2014) provides a fine, extended discussion of differences among PES systems.
72 Barrett (2003, 2012) are key publications on why climate negotiations have so far failed.
73 Baragwanath and Bayi (2020) report a similar finding on a site in the Brazilian rainforest. Deforestation was significantly less in
land inside a territory where inhabitants had been given collective property rights than in land outside the border.
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
52 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
We are talking here of the role social norms play in sustaining cooperation among resource
users. Anthropologists and political scientists observed a different world from the one Hardin
(1968) had considered when describing the tragedy of the commons. He had alluded to grazing
fields from a distance, whereas those scholars studied grazing fields in the village economies
they had visited. They discovered that spatially confined ecosystems such as woodlands, water
sources, grazing fields, mangrove forests, and coastal fisheries are often common property,
but are regarded as property of the community. Access to them by outsiders is not permitted
without the community’s consent. To contrast spatially confined common-property resources
from the open access resources Hardin had in mind, scholars have named the former, common-
pool resources (CPRs). A rich, striking literature has found that communities restrict their use of
CPRs using a wide range of measures (see below), held together by social norms of conduct.
The norms are effective because community members have an incentive to impose them on
one another. Hardin had not appreciated that there are common property resources which are
not open to all, so his analysis came under criticism (Feeny et al. 1990; Ostrom, 1990). That
local ecosystems in low income countries are communally held is not a happenstance. Annex 2
discusses the reasons.
Because CPRs are seats of non-market relationships, transactions involving them are not
mediated by market prices, which is why their fate usually goes unreported in national economic
accounts. An extensive empirical literature identifies community practices over the use of CPRs
that differ in their complexity, depending on both geography and history. Because mutual
enforcement, not external enforcement (e.g. by the state), is the way rules and regulations are
imposed on the use of CPRs, it pays to read examples.
In an early study of communitarian allocation rules over the use of standing timber in the
Swiss Alps, Netting (1981) found that village councils marked equivalent shares for community
members, who in turn drew lots for the shares. Sanctions were imposed on those who took
more firewood than their entitlements. In summer months, cattle owners were entitled to graze
as many animals on the communal alps as they were able to feed from their private supply
of hay during the preceding winter. That way the total number of animals was kept roughly
in line with the fodder potential of the village meadows. Netting traced the origins of such
communitarian arrangements on the Alps to the 15th century.
From his study of communitarian allocation rules over water and grazing land in South Indian
villages, Wade (1988) reported that villages downstream had an elaborate set of rules for
regulating the use of water from irrigation canals. Fines were imposed on those who violated
the rules. Most villages had similar arrangements for the use of grazing land.
In a study of the Kuna tribe in Panama, Howe (1986) described an intricate set of sanctions
imposed on those who violate norms of behaviour designed to protect a common source of
fresh water. In a study of sea tenure in northern Brazil, Cordell and McKean (1985) uncovered a
system of codes that served to protect the fishery. Violations of the codes were met with a range
of sanctions that included both shunning and the sabotaging of fishing equipment. And so on.
Are CPRs important to rural people? In a pioneering study on the significance of CPRs, Jodha
(1986) found in a sample of semi-arid districts in Central India that the proportion of income
among rural families that is based directly on CPRs is 15-25%. Cavendish (2000) arrived at even
larger estimates than Jodha from a study of villages in Zimbabwe: the proportion of income
based directly on CPRs was found to be 35%, the figure for the poorest quintile being 40%.
CPRs not only supply households with a regular flow of ecosystem services and tangible
goods (water, fuelwood, fibres, building material, fruit, medicines, honey, fish), they also offer
protection against agricultural risks. CPRs are sometimes the only assets to which the otherwise
disenfranchised have access. In a study of households on the margin of the Tapajos National
Forest in the Brazilian Amazon, Pattanayak and Sills (2001) found that households made more
trips into the forest for non-timber products when times are hard. In an early study, Hecht,
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
53The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
Anderson, and May (1988) described the importance of babassu products among the landless
in Maranho, Brazil. Extraction from the plants offers support to the poorest of the poor, most
especially women. The authors reported that babassu products are an important source of
cash income in the period between agricultural-crop harvests. Falconer (1990) offered a similar
picture in the West African forest zone.
The downside of communitarian institutions is that, like so many other institutions, they suffer
from inequities. That women may be excluded from CPRs has been recorded in the study of
communal forestry in India (Agarwal, 2001). Entitlements from CPRs have also been known
to be based on private holdings, that is, richer households have been found to enjoy a greater
proportion of benefits. Beteille (1983), for example, drew on examples from India to show that
access to CPRs is often restricted to the elite (e.g. caste Hindus). Cavendish (2000) reported that
in absolute terms richer households in his sample of villages in Zimbabwe took more from CPRs
than poor households. In an early review, McKean (1992) noted that benefits from CPRs are
frequently captured by the elite.74 Agarwal and Narain (1999) exposed the same phenomenon
in their study of water management practices in the Gangetic plain. The state can play a
powerful role here. It can engage with communities so as to eliminate social inequities. Well-
functioning states do that in other contexts (e.g. ensuring fair elections). We argue below that
it has an important, albeit indirect, role in the management of CPRs. But to do that it pays to
study conditions that are necessary for people to trust one another and have confidence in their
institutions to protect that trust. As would be expected, these issues are vital to the economics
of biodiversity.
15 The State, Communities and Civil Society
Institutions are overarching entities. People engage with one another in institutions. Collective
action would prove to be impossible in an institutional vacuum. It is then natural to ask: under
what contexts would a group of people wishing to engage with one another enjoy the mutual
trust they need in order to fulfil the obligations they undertake?
Outside the family, three contexts suggest themselves: (i) the people are trustworthy; (ii) the
group is able to appeal to an external agency to enforce agreements; and (iii) group members
are able to converge on norms of behaviour that mutually enforce agreements.75
Economic models of the marketplace are built mostly on (ii), where the external enforcer is
usually taken to be the state, its coercive weapon being the law and the force required to
enforce the law. Although the models rely on (i) only minimally, it is not as rare in the world as
we may suspect. Evolutionary psychologists have found that communal living, role modelling,
education, and receiving rewards and punishments (be it here or in the afterlife) help us to
acquire a general favouring of pro-social behaviour. People are trustworthy in varying degrees.
When we resist the temptation to go take a closer look at an exotic plant in the woods it is not
necessarily because others will rebuke us for trampling over fragile Nature, it can be because we
do not want to disfigure it. The problem is that although pro-social disposition is not foreign to
human nature, no society could rely exclusively on it. How is one to know the extent to which
someone is trustworthy? If the personal benefits from betraying one’s conscience are large
enough, almost all of us would betray it. Most people have a price, but it is hard to tell who
comes at what price.
People everywhere have tried to establish institutions in which they have an incentive to
cooperate. The incentives differ in their details, but they have one thing in common: those who
74 See also Bromley (1992) and McKean (1992) for wide-ranging reviews of CPR management schemes.
75 Daily routines within the family are usually carried out without thought because of mutual affection among members.
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
54 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
break agreements without cause suffer punishment.76 In contrast to (i), where the punishment is
meted out by self-censorship, in (ii) it is meted out by a source external to the person (the state,
tribal chieftain, village head), and in (iii) it is meted out in the community by mutual censorship,
requiring as it does social norms of behaviour. The evidence of people’s doings that are required
if (ii) is in play is based on verification (e.g. judgments in law courts). In contrast, (iii) requires
that people are able to observe one another’s behaviour, otherwise social norms would have
nothing to work on.
Trust in others and confidence in the institutions of government and markets that enable people
to engage with one another for mutual advantage is called social capital.77 It is, however,
common to regard society as comprising three classes of institutions: households, markets
and state. The economics of climate change was initially framed explicitly with that three-way
classification. The idea of social capital illuminates a fourth class of institutions, comprising
communities and civil society. They both play an essential role in enabling people to engage with
one another without the direct involvement of either markets or the state.
Social capital is the seat where individuals and organisations can be held to account by the
public. Reputation is a form of enabling asset that private firms are eager to acquire. Firms
today try with varying success to purchase reputation (Bakan, 2020), but in previous times it
was acquired by behaving in ways that build their reputation. For that to be a viable route,
consumers have to coordinate on norms of doing business with firms. Word of mouth used
to be a common method of coordination. Today social media is a powerful platform. In Part II,
we will suggest that the public and private financial institutions both have large roles to play
in directing private investment toward projects that protect and restore Nature and their
sustainable use.
Communities and civil society – the ‘third estate’, as they are sometimes called – carry somewhat
different connotations. It is not a travesty to think of ‘communities’ as institutions that work
outside the state (they mostly evolved in traditional societies when there was no state, at least
not in the contemporary sense) to manage, for example, their local ecosystem.78 That can be
contrasted with ‘civil society’, which we may think of as comprising institutions that engage
actively with the state, for example, to create a place for services that the state is either unwilling
or unable to provide and, more generally, to make the state function better (that can be a cause
of friction between the two of course).
Nor are communities and civil society without their own deficiencies. As noted in the previous
section, communities can harbour large inequities (e.g. between men and women; between
castes, ethnic groups, and so on) and civil society can degenerate into mere special interest
groups; worse, street gangs. For simplicity, we amalgamate the pair and regard social
arrangements overseen by communities and civil society as communitarian institutions.
The state has the enormous advantage over communitarian institutions in the ability to
mobilise resources. It can finance projects that these institutions on their own would not be
able to, and it can coordinate their activities for their mutual benefit. The biosphere is spatially
76 Offering rewards for good behaviour is the flip side, but for obvious reasons the rewards are more in the form of prestige,
not money.
77 The literature is enormous. Contributions that have direct bearing on the issues studied here include Coleman (1988), Putnam
(1993), Fukuyama (1995), and Granato, Ingelhart, and Leblang (1996). Dasgupta and Serageldin (2000) is a collection of both
theoretical and empirical essays on the subject. The way the notion of social capital has been framed here and in the Review is not
quite the same as it has been proposed in the above works, nor is it framed the same way even among them, but ambiguity is not a
hindrance in so complex a notion; it is instead a help, as it enables us to avoid a protracted discussion on what social capital means.
78 That depends, of course, on how far back one looks back. In an essay on the world in Homer’s songs, Finley (2002: 89) wrote:
“The world of Odysseus was split into many communities like Ithaca. Among them, between each community and every other one,
the normal relationship was one of hostility, at times passive, in a kind of armed truce, and at times active and bellicose.” Finley
would seem here to be using ‘community’ to refer to the social fabric of an entire island kingdom.
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
55The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
so heterogeneous that knowledge of its ecosystems’ particular traits are held only by their
inhabitants. On the other hand, the inhabitants’ knowledge of the circumstances of the outside
world may be very limited, which is yet another reason the state has a vital role. The illustrations
in Box 14, however, point to extensive government failure to aid communities to protect and
preserve their local ecosystems.
Effective institutional structures are therefore polycentric.79 We explain the idea below, but
it is a commonplace in the notion of a mixed economy, in which competitive markets supply
private goods and services, and a central authority supplies public goods and services (including
application of the law and measures that brings about a fair distribution of assets among
people). The price system is the hallmark of markets. It serves not only to coordinate the choices
people make, it simultaneously aggregates diffused information across the economy.80 That
system, however, cannot serve to protect and preserve biodiversity because Nature’s processes
do not satisfy a number of technical conditions that are required for markets to function well.
Two conditions are especially important: (i) Nature is mobile, meaning that it is impossible to
establish private property rights to many of its processes (silence and invisibility reinforce the
problems); and (ii) production and consumption possibilities involving the biosphere (in other
words, all production and consumption possibilities!) are characterised by non-linearities.
Communitarian institutions fill the hole created by the inability of markets to function well.
Figure 18 Effective and Ineffective Institutions
79 Ostrom (2010) popularised the term.
80 For a fine exposition of the place of the price system in a well-functioning economy, see Stiglitz (1989).
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
56 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
Polycentric structures that are best placed to protect and promote biodiversity are thus layered
institutions: global, regional, national, and community based. Each layer requires an authority
at the apex to achieve coordination below and with other layers laterally. In the contemporary
world, there is thus an enormous role for government and non-government organisations
(NGOs) to help build or rebuild local institutions through which communities could get to
realise the advantages of informed collective management under changing times. Such help
would involve, among other things, devising clearly defined rules concerning the allocation
of burdens and benefits, rules whose compliance can be observed (hopefully verified also)
by the others who are involved. Figure 19 adds communitarian institutions to the customary
triad of households, markets and the state for classifying institutions within a nation. States
on their own are not capable of curbing transnational externalities. The management of
global public goods, such as the benefits we all enjoy from tropical rainforests and the oceans,
and the harms we all suffer from wildlife trafficking and pandemics, requires transnational
institutions. Part II highlights humanity’s collective need today for an enhanced version of
supra-national institutions.
Figure 19 Society’s Institutions
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
57The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
Box 14
The Fragility of Trust
Collective undertakings are of necessity built on trust and confidence in others. The law
is able to function only when citizens trust one another to abide by the law and have
confidence in government to enforce the law. In turn, those responsible for law enforcement
have to believe that not to discharge their responsibility will prove costly for them, say, come
the next election. Communitarian management of CPRs is also built directly on trust. The
mechanism that provides incentives to members to abide by their agreement and so enjoy the
benefits of cooperation involves the use of social norms. But social norms can prove effective
only when individuals trust one another to act in accordance with the norms. Mutual trust is
self-confirming.
The problem is, mutual distrust is also self-confirming. If everyone believes that no one
else will behave in accordance with the collective undertaking, they will all act in ways that
confirm their beliefs. The move from one set of beliefs to the other tips a society from order
into disorder. Even though the deep cause of the societal rupture is a flip in beliefs, proximate
causes could be extraneous events. Even a rumour that a small group of people in one small
part of the country has mistreated another equally small group of people can start a riot that
spreads. The benefits of cooperation can only be enjoyed if society has in place corrective
mechanisms to quell and repair collective dysfunctions that may be caused by any one of a
multitude of external events. Polycentric institutions create the necessary separation among
jurisdictions to enable society to correct local failures to cooperate.81
Both MA (2005a-d) and IPBES (2019) found that CPRs have deteriorated in recent years
in many parts of the poor world. Why should that have happened in those places where
previously they had been managed in a sustainable manner?
Several classes of reasons suggest themselves: one stems from deteriorating external
circumstances, under which both the private and communal profitability of investment in the
resource base decline. Political instability is a general cause. It is, of course, a visible cause of
resource degradation, as civil disturbance all too frequently expresses itself by a destruction
not only of produced and human capital, but of natural capital too. But increased uncertainty
in communal property rights is a frequent, often hidden cause. People could worry that the
state or warlords will assume authority over the CPRs. If the security of a CPR is uncertain, the
returns expected from collective action are low. The influence would run the other way too,
with growing resource scarcity contributing to political instability, as rival groups battle over
resources. The feedback could be positive, exacerbating the problem for a time, reducing
expected returns yet further.
A second class of reasons involves the unintended consequences of even well-intentioned
public policy. They can happen in curious ways. Mukhopadhyay (2008) is a historical study of
the transformation of agrarian land in Goa, India, that was earlier owned and regulated by a
communitarian institution called the communidades. When Goa became a part of India, the
government introduced land reforms that gave tenants the right to purchase the land they
had worked. The author does not question the underlying motivation behind land reforms,
but notes one unfortunate consequence, which is the breakdown of cooperation among
households in maintaining the embankments that had earlier prevented the land from
flooding by tidal waters. Over the years, deterioration of the embankments has led to an
increase in soil salinity.
81 See Dasgupta (2007) for the place of trust in understanding economics, not merely the economics of biodiversity.
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
58 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
A third class of reasons CPRs have deteriorated in many places has to do with rapid
population growth, which triggers environmental degradation if institutional practices are
unable to adapt to the increased pressure on resources. In Cote d’Ivoire, for example, growth
in rural population was accompanied by increased deforestation and reduced fallows in the
1990s. Biomass production declined, as did agricultural productivity (López, 1998).82
A fourth class of reasons appears when community rights are overturned by central fiat. In
order to establish its political authority, a number of states in the Sahel, for example, imposed
rules that destroyed communitarian management practices in the forests. Villages ceased to
have authority to enforce sanctions on those who broke community rules. But state officials
did not have the expertise to manage the commons, often they were corrupt. Thomson,
Feeny, and Oakerson (1986), Somanathan (1991) and Baland and Platteau (1996), among
others, have identified the ways by which the exercise of state authority can damage local
institutions and turn CPRs into what are in effect open-access resources.
Management of the global commons involves an even more complicated environment for
trust to emerge. Cooperation among nations over such activities as tele-communication,
use of air space, and time keeping has been remarkably successful in comparison with the
outcomes so far of negotiations over climate and biodiversity. In a far-reaching body of work
that uncovers reasons that climate negotiations have so far failed to achieve agreed goals,
Barrett (2003, 2012, 2015) has shown that the agreements made were never enforceable.
What passed as commitments were thus not credible. In these works, Barrett has also
explored ways in which agreements could be so framed that they would be enforceable.
16 Arbitraging Assets
We began by observing that we are all asset managers and that asset management involves
comparisons of portfolios – across time or at a point in time. That means asset management
involves making comparisons of alternative investment opportunities. That said, none of us
views the world from a single perspective. We each play a private role but on occasion we also
view the world as a citizen. This distinction lies at the heart of the Review. It explains why people
lament our collective behaviour that leads to the Impact Inequality, even while contributing to
that behaviour.
Let us then imagine for concreteness that in their role as private asset managers people desire
to maximise their personal wealth and value stocks at their market prices, but that as citizens
they commend, even vote for, economic programmes that protect and promote societal well-
being. The latter means that as citizen investors people value investment opportunities in terms
of accounting prices. Because markets place little value on Nature, the private investor’s portfolio
does not contain many investments that protect and promote Nature (that is, ‘green’ projects),
while citizen investors favour portfolios that include green projects. Nevertheless, whether
people act as private investors or commend investment projects as citizen investors, their goal
is to maximise portfolio values – the big difference between the two types of investors lies in
the portfolios they believe maximise wealth. In the former case, the wealth in question is private
wealth; in the latter, the wealth in question is what we have previously called inclusive wealth.
The difference between them lies in the prices used to value capital goods. To have a sharp
distinction between the ‘private’ and ‘public’ roles we all play, let us imagine the citizen investor
is concerned with the global portfolio of assets.83 In either case, to say that an investor’s goal is
to maximise wealth is to say that her goal is to maximise the value of the portfolio from among
the portfolios available to her for consideration.
82 Diamond (2005) offers an account of past societies that collapsed as their local ecosystems collapsed. In a number of cases, the
collapse was triggered by pressures of population growth that had led to unsustainable uses of land.
83 The comparisons we make in the text can also be undertaken if the citizen investor is interested only in the nation’s portfolio.
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
59The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
16.1 Arbitraging Assets at a Point in Time
Maximising the value of portfolios is a goal, but that does not on its own tell the investor what
rule she should follow when choosing or commending a portfolio. Suppose, to take an example,
a private investor has an amount of money to invest, say £X. Value maximisation would direct
her to choose a portfolio that earns as large as possible a risk-adjusted return on her investment
at the end of, say, a year. For simplicity, we assume she intends to spread her £X only on
financial assets and a one-year government bond that offers a fixed rate of interest. The investor
is interested in the real return, of course, but that is uncertain if only because she cannot
forecast changes in the consumer price index. That uncertainty will make itself felt equally
for all assets. So we may ignore it in the account that follows and suppose that the return on
government bonds is certain.
In order to choose her portfolio, the private investor assesses the income she is likely to receive
from each of the stocks that are available for purchase. Income from a stock (i.e. the dividend
she would receive) is the stock’s yield. But the price of the stock relative to the government bond
could go up or down during the year.84 We call that capital gains, recognising that the ‘gains’
could be a loss. At the end of a year the investor’s wealth as capitalised in the stock would be
its yield plus the value of that stock. The latter will contain the capital gains term. Therefore, the
rate return on investment in a stock is the yield on a unit of that stock plus the capital gains on it
over the year.
In contrast, the interest on £1 on the government bond would be the bond’s yield. At the end
of the year, the investor’s wealth as capitalised in the bond would be the amount she receives
when she cashes in the bond. In other words, the rate of return on investment in the bond is the
interest on the bond over the year. Her wealth at the end of a year is her initial investment in the
portfolio of her choice plus the return she earns on it. It is then obvious that value maximisation
leads the private investor to choose a portfolio in which, adjusting for risk, the assets offer the
same rate of return. This rule is known as the arbitrage condition.85 And she holds a portfolio
rather than a single asset so as to reduce uncertainty in her wealth in a year’s time (as in the
saying that one should not put all of one’s eggs in the same basket).
No two private investors are likely to hold the same portfolio, if for no other reason than that
their assessment of risks would typically differ as would their attitude to risk. But the basic idea
remains: asset management involves comparison of rates of return on investment.
For the small private asset manager, prices would be unaffected by her portfolio choice, but for
the citizen who is trying to reach an opinion on the portfolio humanity ought to hold, the prices
she uses to estimate rates of return will not be independent of the portfolio she favours. She
will, for example, notice that the oceans and the atmosphere have neither markets nor social
institutions to mediate their use, meaning that their prices are zero. Fishing companies no doubt
incur harvesting cost, but that only amounts to the cost of transporting fish from the oceans
to the marketplace; the cost does not include the rent they ought to pay the global community
for the fish they catch, nor for the wasted bycatch they throw back into the waters. Similarly,
there is no global tax on carbon emissions; mostly we are free to emit as much as we like.86
The citizen investor will know also that communities who may have been inhabiting a region
rich in biodiversity have no deeds to their assets and are vulnerable to eviction by governments
in aid of companies eager to mine, ranch and establish plantations. Because she recognises the
84 Government bond serves as the numeraire in this account. There is no loss in generality in doing this.
85 If, adjusting for risk, the expected rate of return on one asset was greater than that on another, the latter would not be included in
her portfolio of choice. That is the essence of ‘arbitrage’, which is the practice of taking advantage of price differences between two
or more asset markets.
86 In fact, the rents are not zero in the market place; they are negative because of the plethora of subsidies governments offer people
to exploit Nature (Box 9).
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
60 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
significance of human rights and the ecosystems where the inhabitants reside (the biodiversity
in that unique region is a global public good), she will place a positive value on them – the
accounting prices she estimates would be positive – but then she would proceed to apply the
reasoning we have just reviewed. The reasoning in this particular example could lead her to
place a non-negotiably high value to the region, which would mean to her that the region
should never be converted through development. She will agitate for an international agreement
to maintain the region in the global portfolio of assets, an agreement that presumably would
include financial payments to governments in the region for disallowing its conversion into
capital goods that are only useful for producing provisioning services.
If forecasting rates of return in the marketplace is hard, projecting rates of return on investment
in assets that have no markets is harder still. Which is why our citizen investor’s work is harder
than that of the private investor. Measuring an ecosystem’s yield when it is for free in the
marketplace requires an understanding of ecology. If the capital good the citizen investor is
considering is a fishery in the oceans, yield would be the additional biomass of fish that would
be available in a year’s time if a unit less was harvested today.87 Because fisheries are expected
to decline in relation to stocks of produced capital under business as usual, our citizen investor
would expect the accounting price of ocean fisheries relative to government bonds to increase
over time. So the rate of return – and as she is imagining the investment as a citizen, it would be
the social rate of return – on the fishery would be its yield plus the (accounting) capital gains it
would enjoy. If the asset she is considering is the atmosphere as a sink for our carbon emissions,
its social rate of return would be the reduction in damages over the year that humanity would
enjoy if emissions were reduced by a unit today.88 Box 15 presents an estimate of the yield of
the biosphere’s stock of primary producers (Section 2). The exercise brings together the macro
statistics of the state of the biosphere (Sections 5-7) and the application of micro reasoning to
global statistics that we as investors engage in.
Box 15
Global Yield of Primary Producers
Applying remote sensing data covering several years to models that trace the yield (expressed
in net biomass production per year) of various seats of biomass to such factors as sunlight,
climate and terrain, the yield of the planet’s primary producers was estimated at the end of
the 20th century to be about 105 trillion Kg per year (Field et al. 1998). Primary producers’
yield is called, understandably ‘primary production’. Similar techniques have been used
to estimate the global stock of biomass, which has been found to be about 550 trillion
Kg (Bar-On, Phillips, and Milo, 2018). The latter figure exceeds the planetary biomass of
primary producers, because it includes the biomass of bacteria, not all of which are primary
producers; as well as the near-negligible biomass of animals. Viewing the biosphere from the
perspective of humanity as a whole, the biosphere-wide average yield on the stock (105/550
a year), when units of biomass are awarded equal weights, is approximately 19% a year.
That is of course not the primary producers’ yield which, because of its spatial heterogeneity,
should be understood to be the highest yield on a marginal unit of primary producer biomass
across the biosphere. Moreover, the 19% is an underestimate because the stock is an
overestimate of primary producer biomass.89
Jordà et al. (2019) have estimated that the long-run global yield (rent or dividend) on
housing and equities has averaged around 5% a year. If we take that figure to be a proxy for
87 Biomass in an ecosystem is the mass of living material in it, measured by weight, say, kilograms.
88 The social cost of carbon, made familiar in the economics of climate change, is calculated by summing the damages humanity
would be expected to suffer from over time if a unit more carbon was emitted today.
89 There are further biases that point in the same direction. For details, see Review, Chapter 2.
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
61The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
the yield on produced capital and assume that the global economy has been managing its
portfolio of assets in an efficient manner, then the capital gains on produced capital relative
to natural capital would as a minimum have equalled the difference between the two figures
(i.e. 14% a year). That is an application of the arbitrage condition. In short, under ideal
circumstances we would have expected the accounting price of primary producers relative to
produced capital to be declining by 14% a year.
Patently, the latter has not been happening in recent decades, nor is it happening today.
Destruction of the world’s rainforests and degradation of the soils, when taken together
with global accumulation of produced capital (approximately 3% a year) points to rainforests
above ground and the soils underground, which are important seats of primary producers,
becoming scarcer relative to produced capital, not more abundant. Simple and crude as this
calculation is, it demonstrates how far off we are from an efficient allocation of global assets.
It points especially to the enormous imbalance we have created between produced and
human capital on the one hand, and natural capital on the other.
16.2 Arbitraging Assets Across Time
In standard economic accounts, investment is interpreted as foregone consumption. That
means investment in a capital good is the increase in its quantity or improvement in its quality
that will be realised tomorrow if resources are diverted to it from consumption today.90 We are
talking of net investment, that is, investment net of depreciation. In the contrasting case of
pollution, depreciation is the decline in societal well-being caused by an increase in pollution
(e.g. depreciation of the atmosphere in its role as a sink for carbon emissions is the net increase
in carbon concentration).91
Common-sense notions of investment, however, carry a sense of robust activism. When the
government invests in roads, the picture drawn is of bulldozers levelling the ground and
macadam being laid by workers in hard hats. But the notion of capital goods being adopted
here extends beyond produced capital to include human capital and natural capital. That
training people to be teachers is investing in human capital is simple enough. To leave a forest
unmolested may not sound much like investment, but it is an investment. It enables the forest to
grow; its growth is its yield. To allow a fishery to re-stock is to invest in the fishery, the growth in
biomass is its yield; and so on. Investment in Nature can mean simply waiting.
We began the account of asset management by assuming that our private investor has £X to
invest. As she has to keep funds aside for consumption purposes, her present wealth would be
greater than that. So then how did she arrive at the figure X?
Suppose government bonds have a yield of 4%. To the investor that means time has an arrow, as
a unit of consumption foregone today will yield 1.04 units of additional income in a year’s time
which she could consume. So she will not be indifferent between a unit of consumption today
and a unit of consumption in a year’s time, she will want more in a year’s time as compensation
for foregoing a unit of consumption today.
How much more? Presumably 4% more, because that is the rate on offer in government bonds.
In short, she would adjust her allocation between consumption and investment to the point
where the trade-off she is willing to make between an additional unit of consumption today and
an additional unit of consumption in a year’s time is in the ratio 1 to 1.04. From that figure, we
can conclude that the percentage rate at which she is willing to swap a marginal unit today for
90 Investment in the atmosphere when viewed as a sink for carbon compounds means a reduction in carbon emissions (a by-product
of production and consumption).
91 The oceans absorb atmospheric carbon as well, but because it becomes increasingly acidic, that depreciation should be included in
estimates of the depreciation of the atmosphere as a sink.
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
62 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
an addition to her consumption at the end of a year is 0.04, or 4%. We say 4% is her private
consumption discount rate over the year.
Being a reasoning person, she so chooses her mix of consumption and investment that her
consumption discount rate equals the yield on government bonds. She reckons she will want to,
and be able to, consume more next year and still have funds left to invest in government bonds
that will make her wealthier still. And she wants to continue becoming wealthier because she
plans to have children and would like her children to be wealthier than she, and so on, down
the generations. In short, she wants her dynasty to enjoy sustainable development.
For the global citizen investor, the reasoning is altogether more complex. She is reasoning on
behalf of humanity.92 As she is trying to identify the mix of consumption and investment she
can commend to the world (and remember, by ‘investment’ we mean investment in all three
categories of capital goods), she will not regard future yields of the various capital goods
to be independent of the mix she commends. Even the yield in government bonds would
be influenced by her choice. But a reasoning similar in character to the one she used in her
role as a private investor tells her that what she is after is the ideal point of contact between
socially desirable and socio-ecologically possible futures; for that point of contact is the mix she
would commend. And the mix she will commend is one in which the social discount rate on
consumption in each period equals the social rates of return on capital goods.
Including the term ‘social’ in defining the two sets of rates is meant to signal that the citizen
investor is basing them on the common good, not her personal good.93 She will be using
accounting prices to value capital goods, not market prices. Adverse environmental externalities
associated with investment in produced and human capital mean that social rates on return on
these two broad categories of capital goods are lower than market rates of return. Similarly,
because people do not internalise the well-being of others’ descendants, the social discount rate
on consumption would be lower than the corresponding private rate. Taken together, as a social
investor she will urge governments to design policies that coax private investors to invest more in
natural capital than they do now. The call would be to tilt portfolios in favour of natural capital.
Box 16
Discounting Future Consumption
Discussions on social discount rates on consumption have been prominent in cost benefit
analysis and the economics of climate change. The rates in use in policy assessment have
almost always been positive in sign. Why?
Three reasons suggest themselves: (i) the citizen investor may desire to award a lower weight
to a marginal unit of consumption in the future simply because it will be in the future; (ii)
there is a risk that humanity will cease to exist in the future; and (iii) the citizen investor
expects the average level of consumption to be higher in the future, meaning that a marginal
addition to consumption in the future will have less value to a future person than it has to
someone today. Reason (i) reflects myopia, (ii) reflects discounting for risk of extinction, and
(iii) reflects a desire to discount to compensate for intergenerational inequity. Notice though
that reason (iii) says that if the expectation is that people will be poorer in the future, then
the consumption discount rate could be negative.
There is a fourth, more subtle reason the citizen investor may choose to place a lower weight
to a unit of consumption of future generations relative to that of the present generation.
92 Her reasoning will be based on more restricted considerations if she adopts the role of citizen of her country, but even that would
be a lot wider than her role as a private investor.
93 The term common good is no longer in much use among economists, who instead prefer ‘social well-being’ because it
encompasses a wider range of ethical considerations.
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
63The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
It has to do with countering a bias that the productivity of capital displays toward the
future. Because well-chosen investment has a positive yield, time has a direction in economic
reasoning. A unit of investment gives rise to more than a unit of additional consumption in
the future. The Review (Chapter 10) shows that unless the temporal asymmetry is countered,
reasons (i)-(iii) may not be sufficient to ensure a reasonably egalitarian distribution of well-
being across the generations.
The above reasoning shows that consumption discount rates reflect a combination of the
citizen investor’s ethical values and her reading of socio-ecological possibilities. The Review
shows that the discount rate (the rate could vary over time) she will want to deploy on future
consumption is the percentage rate at which the accounting price of consumption declines
over the year in question. The citizen investor’s choice of consumption discount rates has
powerful implications for her portfolio selection. Here is an illustration using numbers taken
from studies in the economics of climate change:
Suppose the investor expects consumption per capita to grow at the rate 1.3% over an
indefinite number of years. In their work, the values chosen by Nordhaus (1994) and Stern
(2006, 2015) for the required ethical parameters give rise to two very different consumption
discount rates: Nordhaus: 4.3% a year; Stern: 1.4% a year.94
Simple computation shows that a marginal unit of consumption is awarded half the
weight if it is to appear 51 years in the future for Stern and 17 years in the future for
Nordhaus. Differences in their choice of consumption discount rates explain to an extent the
disagreements among the authors on the urgency over global climate change. Nordhaus’
4.3% a year may not seem very different from Stern’s 1.4% a year, but is in fact a lot
higher when it is put to work on the economics of the long run. Just how much higher
can be seen from the fact that the present-value of a small loss in consumption 100 years
from now if discounted at 4.3% a year is 17 times smaller than the present-value of that
same consumption loss if the discount rate used is 1.4% a year. The moral is banal: if the
time horizon is long, even small differences in consumption discount rates can mean large
differences in the message cost-benefit analysis gives us.
Drupp et al. (2018) reported findings of a survey in which economists were asked to say what
rates they thought would be appropriate for discounting investment projects. While 30% of
respondents recommended Stern’s 1.4% or lower, only 9% recommended Nordhaus’ 4.5%
or higher, with 61% forming the middle ground between the two. The authors also reported
that there is much less disagreement among economists than we are led to believe from the
literature on discounting. 90% of economists find a discount rate between 1-3% acceptable
for long-run public projects.
17 Inclusive Wealth and Social Well-Being
We have now studied the way our citizen investor would reason so as to arrive, in only
broad terms no doubt, at the mix of consumption and various forms of investment she
would commend. The reasoning moved from considerations of consumption-investment
mixes at the micro level (for that is what portfolio analysis amounts to) toward a picture
of the macroeconomy moving through time (the mix of consumption and investments in
the aggregate).
But there is an enquiry that runs the other way, from the evaluation of the macroeconomy to
rules that should govern decisions at the microeconomic level (i.e. at the level of households
and firms). Our citizen investor would no doubt be astonished if the two routes did not lead
94 The figures are taken from Dasgupta (2008), who also offers their justification.
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
64 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
her eventually to commend the same policies. In this section we confirm that. For simplicity, we
continue to imagine the citizen investor to be interested in evaluating the global economy.
There are two types of economic evaluation that we all conduct as citizens. One is policy
analysis, the other is sustainability assessment. To see what they involve, consider the list of six
questions we all ask frequently:
(1) How is the economy doing?
(2) How has it been doing in recent years?
(3) What would be our projection of the economy in the future if policies and institutions
evolve in the way we expect them to evolve?
(4) How is the economy likely to perform under alternative policies?
(5) Which policies should we support?
(6) What would be an ideal set of policies?
The questions prompt the citizen investor to make two types of comparisons:
Questions (1)-(3) require that she assesses whether an economy is on a path of sustainable
development; that is, she evaluates a change that has been or is likely to be experienced by an
economy as it moves through time. That is sustainability assessment. An example of the kind of
question she asks is: “Are the prospects of improvements in people’s lives and the lives of their
descendants better now than they were a decade ago?”
Questions (4)-(6) on the other hand prompt the citizen investor to engage in policy analysis.
There she evaluates the economic change that would be brought about by a proposed shift in
policy at a point in time. An example of the kind of question she asks in policy analysis is: “Is
the wetland preservation project being proposed likely to improve people’s lives and the lives of
their descendants?”
Question (3) is the projection of the socio-ecological world around which both sustainability
assessment and policy analysis are conducted.
It transpires that sustainability assessment and policy analysis, though seemingly different,
amount to the same exercise.95 It transpires also that the measure our citizen investor should
use to conduct the exercise is an inclusive measure of wealth, that is, adjusted for demographic
changes, the sum of the accounting values of produced capital, human capital and natural
capital. So we call the measure inclusive wealth (Figure 20).
Adjustments for demographic changes over time could be taken to mean inclusive wealth per
capita, rather than inclusive wealth itself. Figure 9, which presented the Managi-Kumar (2018)
estimates of movements in the three components of global inclusive wealth per capita in the
period 1992 to 2014, signalled just that.
Inclusive wealth is the measure of an economy’s productive capacity. If the inclusive wealth
per capita we bequeath to our descendants is greater than the inclusive wealth per capita
we ourselves inherited, we would be leaving behind a larger productive base for each of our
descendants. Being an aggregate figure, inclusive wealth does not reflect its distribution across
people. An enormous literature on distributive justice can be brought to bear to sharpen
95 The Review (Chapter 13) contains the formal arguments that show their equivalence.
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
65The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
sustainability assessment and policy analysis. In doing that though, the citizen investor would be
reading the distribution of inclusive wealth, not the distribution of GDP.96
Presenting economic accounts in terms of balance sheets (for that is what wealth accounts
amount to) rather than incomes and expenditures tells us that we will have to revise received
economic wisdom in many areas. Box 17 presents an argument based on environmental
externalities that shows how misleading the argument for free trade can be.
Figure 20 Three Classes of Capital Goods
+
+
+
Tools, machines, buildings
& infrastructure Produced
Capital
Human
Capital
Natural
Capital
Inclusive
Wealth
Knowledge, aptitude,
education, health & skills
Plants, animals, air,
water, soils & minerals
Box 17
Trade, Consumption, and Wealth Transfers
The presence of adverse environmental externalities tells us to question our enthusiasm for
free trade.97 To illustrate why, imagine that timber concessions have been awarded in an
upstream forest of a low income country by its government so as to raise export revenue.
As forests stabilise both soil and water flow and are the habitat for birds and insects,
deforestation erodes soil, increases water run-off, and reduces pollination and pest-control
downstream. If the law recognises the rights of those who suffer damage from deforestation,
the timber company would be required to compensate downstream farmers.
But compensation is unlikely when the cause of damage is many miles away, the victims are
scattered groups of farmers, and the damage cannot be restricted to farmers who have not
bargained with the company. Problems are compounded because damages are not uniform
across farms – their geography matters. Moreover, downstream farmers may not even realise
that the decline in their farms’ productivity is traceable to logging upstream. The timber
96 That social well-being and what we have defined here as inclusive wealth are equivalent for the purposes of sustainability
assessment and policy analysis was shown in a general setting by Dasgupta and Mäler (2000) and Arrow, Dasgupta, and Mäler
(2003a-b). Dasgupta (2004) is a book-length treatment of the equivalence. Arrow et al. (2012, 2013) applied the theorem by
estimating movements in inclusive wealth in five countries (Brazil, China, India, USA, and Venezuela) over the period 1995 to 2000.
Managi and Kumar (2018) is the third of a series of publications that began with UNU-IHDP/UNEP (2012, 2014) in which the idea
has been to estimate movements over time in the inclusive wealth of more than 120 countries, akin to estimates the World Bank
provides annually of movements in the GDP of nations.
97 The analysis here is based on Dasgupta (1990) and Chichilnisky (1994).
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
66 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
company’s operating cost would in those circumstances be less than the social cost of
deforestation (the latter, at least as a first approximation, would be the firm’s logging costs
and the damage suffered by all who are adversely affected). So, the export would contain an
implicit subsidy (the externality), paid for by people downstream. And we have not included
forest inhabitants, who now live under even more straightened circumstances. The subsidy is
hidden from public scrutiny, but it amounts to a transfer of wealth from the exporting to the
importing country. Ironically, some of the poorest people in the exporting country would be
subsidising the incomes of the average importer in what could well be a rich country. That
cannot be right.
Aside from the economic waste associated with externalities, the example has a noteworthy
feature that is rarely noted in celebrations of free trade. As low income countries depend
greatly on the export of primary products (coffee, tea, sugar, timber, fibres, palm oil,
minerals), there is a hidden transfer of wealth from them to importing countries. If the
importing country is rich (which has tended to be the case), then this wealth transfer only
exacerbates such a disparity. The transfer of wealth remains hidden from the national
accounts of both countries because national accounts do not record externalities.
The example also has a general message. Modern consumption patterns, relying as they
do on imported primary goods from distant parts of the world, are prone to being under-
priced. And they are under-priced at source for reasons similar to the present example.
That the final products are under-priced provides people with an incentive to consume
not only too much, but also consume the ecologically wrong sorts of goods. Moreover,
research and development expenditure is directed toward producing new products and new
technologies that are profligate in the use of primary products. That puts further pressure on
the biosphere.
Why should our citizen investor want economic accounts to include inclusive wealth? The reason
is, movements in inclusive wealth track well-being across the generations exactly. If a change
increases well-being across the generations, it records a rise in inclusive wealth. Conversely, if
a change has an adverse effect on well-being across the generations, it records a decline in
inclusive wealth. Inclusive wealth and well-being across the generations are not the same object,
but they move in the exactly the same way.98
How can a measure that is designed to reflect an economy’s productive capacity also reflect
well-being across the generations? The answer is that in estimating inclusive wealth, accounting
prices are used to value capital goods. If we were now to return to the definition of accounting
prices (Section 5), we would recognise that they provide the link between wealth and well-
being. Though it may seem materialistic to speak of wealth, in talking about inclusive wealth
rather than wealth without the qualification, we do not create any dissonance between our
ethical concerns and our concerns about the means to use for enabling lives to flourish. Which
is why it should cause no surprise that appraising investment projects amounts to examining
whether the projects contribute to inclusive wealth.
Economists have long advocated that the criterion for project appraisal should be the net
present value (NPV) of the flow of social benefits. The idea is to measure the flow of benefits,
net of costs, in terms of the accounting values of the flow of goods and services. The procedure
then involves summing the flow of net benefits, discounted at social discount rates. But
summing a project’s benefits over time amounts to the change in inclusive wealth that would be
brought about by the project. It is entirely satisfying that a criterion long in use in social cost-
benefit analysis matches the requirement that policy analysis should be conducted in terms of
the effect of policies on inclusive wealth. Notice though, there is no connection between GDP
98 The equivalence is stated formally and proved in the Review (Chapter 13).
Part I: The State We Are In and Why
67The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
and the NPV of investment projects. To advocate the use of GDP to measure economic progress
while advancing NPV as the criterion for project appraisal is bad economics. We have no
explanation for why the two have managed to survive simultaneously.
We have now come full circle to where we began, for our citizen investor now recognises
that maximising the value of portfolios amounts to wealth maximisation, but as citizen she
interprets wealth to be inclusive wealth. Accounting wages and salaries in this reckoning are
the social returns on human capital; continued protection afforded by mangrove forests against
storms is the return on keeping shrimp farmers at bay; planting and tending trees helps to raise
biodiversity and at the same time reduces carbon in the atmosphere; creating Protected Areas
on land and the seas prevents loss of biodiversity; and so on.
The citizen investor now understands that she has been misled all these years in being told that
GDP growth amounts to economic progress, that her concerns over biodiversity loss run against
what she is told is sound economic reasoning. She realises that the change from one period to
the next in inclusive wealth amounts to inclusive investment, that is, the accounting value of net
changes over the period in the quantities or qualities of all three classes of capital goods.
She now puts pen to paper to confirm that inclusive wealth increases from one period to the
next if (and only if) consumption in that period is less than net domestic product (NDP), that
is, GDP minus the accounting value of depreciation of all capital goods. She realises that it is
possible for GDP to increase over a period of time even as inclusive wealth increases. But she also
realises that because the Impact Inequality globally is so large today, the possibility of global GDP
growth generated by activities that cause depreciation of natural assets for an indefinite period
into the future, even while inclusive global wealth increases, is highly unlikely. She realises that
only formal economic models that include natural capital can, once they have been estimated
from data, provide an answer.
She may also feel that for equity reasons, raising material standards of living in low income
countries and regions ought to take precedence. And because she is persuaded that individual
preferences are socially embedded, she is sanguine that citizens of wealthy countries would
not be sacrificing anything of substance in changing their patterns of consumption to be
less damaging.
Our citizen investor realises as well that economics, when practised correctly, reflects her ethics
and provides her with a grammar for expressing her concerns – opposite to what she has been
told over the years. Once she has understood all that, she will complain to her government that
it is relying on a misleading index of economic success and is correspondingly mismanaging the
economy’s assets. She will ask her economic and finance ministry to explain, for example, why
its economists do not include the accounting value of natural capital in the investment projects
they appraise or in the public policies they advocate. She will ask her government to explain
to her why it is not doing more to repair a global financial system that permitted the world’s
50 largest banks last year to provide more than US$2.6 trillion in loans and other credit to
sectors that have an adverse impact on biodiversity (forestry and agriculture).99
She will then bring her complaints to the attention of her community. Her hope is that if citizens
act together, not only will her government listen, but the world will listen too. She will insist that
eternal vigilance may be the price we have to pay for freedom, but that that freedom will prove
to be meaningless if we are unable to prevent Nature from utter exhaustion.
99 See Portfolio Earth (2020).
68 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
69The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
Part II
The Road Ahead
18 Options for Change
At their core, the problems we face today are no different from those our ancestors faced: how
to find a balance between what we take from the biosphere and what we leave behind for
our descendants. Whereas though our distant ancestors were incapable of affecting the Earth
System as a whole, we are not only able to do that, we are doing it. Humanity now faces a
choice: we can continue down a path where our demands on Nature far exceed its capacity to
meet them on a sustainable basis; or we can take a different path, one where our engagements
with Nature are not only sustainable but also enhance our collective well-being and that of
our descendants.
The Review constructs a unified framework for the economics of biodiversity (Review, Chapters
0-13), which we have presented in a brief form in Part I here. The framework has enabled us
to show that the reasons we are on our current path can be traced to institutional failure writ
large – it is not merely a case of market failure – and the failure of contemporary conceptions
of economic possibilities to acknowledge that we are embedded within Nature, we are not
external to it.100
The Review has also applied the framework to explore institutions that can help us to better
engage with the natural world (Chapters 14-20). Because biodiversity varies geographically,
success will look different from one region, ecosystem or country to the next. Part I showed why.
Different environmental problems also require action that is sensitive to local socio-ecological
conditions. There are countries that are so badly governed that the prime recommendation
of concerned citizens there would be to let their communities manage their local ecosystems
without state interference. There are countries where well-meaning governance has weakened
the place of local knowledge in people’s lives. Then there are countries where with every good
intention the state has embraced policies that may have worked elsewhere but are unsuitable
there. And, of course, societies differ also in their conception of what enables lives to flourish.
The Review has addressed the currently near-universal conception of economic progress and
shown it to be wildly misleading. The Review has also constructed the necessary grammar if
economics is to help shape our values and serve them, not direct them. That is why we do not
even attempt to produce a blueprint of policies appropriate in different locations. What follows
instead guides the reader through options humanity has for achieving the necessary change.
The options for change are geared towards three broad, interconnected transitions, requiring
humanity to (i) ensure that our demands on Nature do not exceed its supply, and that we
increase Nature’s supply relative to its current level; (ii) change our measures of economic
success to help guide us on a more sustainable path; and (iii) transform our institutions and
systems – in particular our finance and education systems – to enable these changes and
sustain them for future generations (Figure 21). The changes needed in our institutions and our
100 The failure writ large includes especially our failure to create appropriate institutions. We are genetically and culturally a
small-group animal that in an evolutionary eyeblink has gone from tens of hundreds to groups of millions to billions. We have
developed technologies in a few generations that enable us to alter the biosphere dramatically, potentially exterminate ourselves, but
we have not developed the supra-national institutions that are increasingly necessary if we are to achieve a sustainable pattern of
activities. We are most grateful to Paul Ehrlich for framing this problem for us.
Part II: The Road Ahead
70 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
customary behaviour will involve hard choices. In what follows we present some of the ideas
that, hopefully, will prove to be useful and on which others will build.101
Figure 21 Summary of Options for Change
The success stories from around the world brought together below not only show what is
possible, they also encourage the thought that the same ingenuity – some would say the
innate capability – that has led us to make demands on the biosphere so large, so damaging
and so quickly relative to the history of the biosphere, can also be redeployed to bring about
transformative change, perhaps even in just as short a time. Although time is not on our side, it
is not too late for us, both individually and collectively, to make the conscious decision to change
paths. Our descendants deserve nothing less.
19 Nature’s Supply and Our Demands
In the wake of the Second World War, what became known as the Marshall Plan was launched
to rebuild Western Europe. While most historians agree that the recovery experienced in Europe
cannot be attributed to the Marshall Plan alone, there can be no doubt that it sped that
astonishing recovery: industrial production in recipient countries leapt by 55% in just four years;
by the effective end of the Marshall Plan in 1951, national per capita incomes in Britain, France
and West Germany were more than 10% above pre-war levels; and the resumption of growth
was sustained over the decades that followed (Eichengreen and De Long, 1991; Eichengreen,
2010). If we are to enhance the biosphere’s health and reduce our demands, large-scale
changes will be required, underpinned by levels of ambition, coordination and political will akin
to (or even greater than) those of the Marshall Plan.102 We elaborate on why below.
101 What follows has been adapted from Chapter 21 of the Review.
102 Such a plea has been made by others, including in Al Gore’s Earth in Balance, first published in 1992, and more recently in a
speech by HRH The Prince of Wales to mark the start of Climate Week NYC, 2020.
Part II: The Road Ahead
71The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
19.1 Conservation and Restoration of Ecosystems
In Part I we identified reasons it is less costly to conserve Nature than it is to restore it, other
things equal. It was noted that markets alone are inadequate for protecting ecosystems
from overuse. Uncertainty in our knowledge of ecosystem tipping points, the irreversibility
of ecosystem processes, and imperfections in verifying one another’s activities, when taken
together, mean that quantity restrictions (e.g. on extraction or pollution) may be a better
instrument than taxation. In the context of conservation, it follows that quantity restrictions,
informed by science and supported by legislation, will help to correct the externalities pervasive
in our engagements with Nature.
Protected Areas have an essential role in conserving and restoring our natural capital, but it has
been estimated that only 20% of Protected Areas are being managed well.103 Improvements can
be made by ensuring that Protected Areas (i) are extended and integrated into the surrounding
land and sea; (ii) involve indigenous people and local communities; and (iii) receive sufficient
resources for their effective management (Review, Chapter 18). The Review points to successes
from around the world to demonstrate what is possible and what works. Examples include the
co-management of the Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve and Haida Heritage Site in Canada,
the community-led management of Cabo Pulmo National Park in Mexico, and the increase in the
global designation of Marine Protected Areas, from 3.2 million km2 in 2000 to 26.9 million km2
today (Duarte et al. 2018; Duarte et al. 2020a, 2020b).
More investment in Protected Areas is needed. The funds required are small. It has been
estimated that to protect 30% of the world’s land and ocean and managing the areas effectively
by 2030 would require an average investment of US$140 billion annually, equivalent to only
0.16% of global GDP and less than one-third of the global government subsidies currently
supporting activities that destroy Nature (Waldron et al. 2020). The benefits, even when
confined to financial benefits, of such levels of protection are estimated to exceed the costs
significantly (Waldron et al. 2020). But there are wider benefits, including lowering the risks
of societal catastrophes in relation to human health – not least the risks of the emergence and
spread of infectious diseases. Dobson et al. (2020) have estimated that the associated costs
over a 10-year period of efforts to monitor and prevent disease spillover (which is driven by
wildlife trade and by loss and fragmentation of tropical forests) would represent just 2% of the
estimated costs of COVID-19.
There is the fear though that biodiversity conservation afforded by marine and terrestrial
protected areas would be neutralised by disruptions caused by climate change. And that
should remind us that Nature’s regulating and maintenance services are complementary to one
another. Neither climate change nor biodiversity loss can be tempered on its own and the efforts
designed to temper them should recognise that.
While avoiding degradation of Nature should be the priority, restoration – habitat management,
rewilding, allowing natural regeneration and creating sustainably productive lands and seas
– also plays an essential role in improving the health of the biosphere (Review, Chapter 19).
Restoration can also help us to address the imbalance between our demands for the biosphere’s
provisioning services on the one hand and for its regulating, maintenance and cultural services
on the other.
Much of global biodiversity and many of our ecosystems lie outside Protected Areas. Modern
agriculture has driven a great deal of environmental decline. Even though monoculture
systems have raised food production, they have diminished biodiversity. Restoration can shift
monocultures and degraded lands and seas to a landscape that provides multiple ecosystem
services, balancing provisioning services with regulating services. Shifting cultivation and crop
103 See UNEP-WCMC, IUCN and NGS (2018).
Part II: The Road Ahead
72 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
rotations (they increase soil fertility and reduce pests) have been standard practice in sustainable
land management. Today that should be supplemented by the offer of greater incentives to
farmers to adopt practices that support biodiversity and ecosystem services. Agri-environment
schemes and Payments for Ecosystems Services (PES) are obvious candidates for further
development. As noted in Part I, the effectiveness of PES schemes has proved to be mixed in low
income countries. But even where such schemes hold great potential, their success depends on
their design and scale of funding.
Better planning for the use of land and marine ecosystems, in the form of legally binding
instruments, can help to provide a framework for balancing the competing demands we make
of our ecosystems. By requiring that more space be given over to Nature, the planning process
can also help to maintain, and even increase, stocks of natural capital. Lessons can be drawn
from successes, from sustainable infrastructure development in the Bahamas, to coastal zone
management in Belize (Review, Chapter 19).
Ecological solutions (often referred to as Nature-based solutions) have the potential to provide
multiple benefits. Restoring ecosystems by ecological means can not only address biodiversity
loss and climate change, they also deliver wider economic benefits. They have frequently been
found to be more cost-effective than engineered solutions and have far fewer unexpected
consequences. They also create employment. As part of fiscal stimulus packages and public
expenditure, investment in natural capital has high social value and the potential for quick
returns. Recent research suggests that ecological investments such as afforestation, parkland
expansion, and restoration of rural ecosystems should have high priority as part of COVID-19
recovery stimuli (UNEP, 2020). Hepburn et al. (2020) have pointed to three reasons for investing
in such activities. First, training requirements are minimal for many ‘green’ projects, implying
that they can be implemented quickly. Second, the work meets social distancing norms. Third,
many countries have blueprints of projects in existing mandates, for example, in programmes
designed to meet international agreements on climate change.
A deeper case can be made for why we should expect a positive link between employment and
‘green investment’. If natural capital were valued at accounting prices, we would expect green
investment to increase substantially, possibly compensating for declines in produced or human
capital accumulation (Section 2). Moving toward a Nature-based economic development will
lead to greater returns to human capital. That in turn would lead to a greater demand for
investment in human capital and for employment.
19.2 A Sustainable Ecological Footprint
If we are to avoid exceeding the limits to what Nature can provide on a sustainable basis,
consumption and production patterns will need to be fundamentally restructured. By
quantifying the resources required for meeting basic human needs, and comparing the
estimates to planetary boundaries (Annex 2) for over 150 countries, a recent study found that
while nutrition, sanitation and the elimination of extreme poverty could be met for all people
without transgressing planetary boundaries, the universal achievement of contemporary lifestyles
in high income countries would require resources several times the sustainable level (O’Neill et
al. 2018). The authors’ figures are very much in line with the crude estimates we reported in
Section 7 of our ecological footprint.
19.2.1 Changing Consumption and Production Patterns
Estimates of our current and predicted future use of provisioning services including food,
fibre, biofuels, timber, water and fishery and aquaculture output tell a clear story of escalating
demands, and corresponding declines in regulating and maintenance services (Review,
Chapter 16).
Part II: The Road Ahead
73The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
Several approaches can help us to meet rising demands for provisioning services while
safeguarding regulating and maintenance services. In addition to changing the balance of crops
intended for human food and animal feed, closing gaps in agricultural yield could go some way
without expanding agricultural land further (Foley et al. 2011). Establishing clear boundaries for
conservation and agriculture (known as ‘land-use zoning’); making payments to avoid habitat
conversion and reducing food waste; strategically deploying technology, infrastructure or
knowledge; and introducing standards and certification schemes are examples of schemes that
can help (Phalan et al. 2016). As well as strategies for avoiding habitat conversion, sustainable
production systems can effectively deliver multiple ecosystem services. Regenerative agriculture,
organic agriculture, agroforestry and low-trophic level aquaculture are capable of enhancing
regulating services (such as pollination and air quality regulation) even while providing food.
Our ecological footprint is not only made up of the material we take from the biosphere, but
also the transformed material we deposit into it as waste (Review, Chapter 4 and 4*). Enforcing
standards for re-use, recycling and sharing also has an important role to play, and is likely to
have a positive economic impact, including the creation of jobs.
Technological innovations can contribute enormously to reducing our footprint. Genetically
modified crops can increase yields even while reducing the contribution food production
makes to climate change and to biodiversity loss (Zilberman, Holland, and Trilnick, 2018).
Vertical farming and meat analogues can increase yields, while reducing the contribution
food production makes to climate change and biodiversity loss. In addition, there are ways to
reduce environmentally damaging inputs, through such methods as precision agriculture and
integrated pest management. Technological innovations can also help to reduce bycatch in
fisheries. Each has potential, but they will only emerge if incentives are provided for developing
and then establishing them on a large scale. Historically the private sector has relied on the state
to provide the investments in research and development (R&D) that raise the productivity of
its own investment in R&D. That there are synergies to be exploited between the two has been
much discussed among historians of science. The state has an enormous role here for helping
to finance and coordinate the investment that will prove to be necessary to help shift to a
sustainable future.
We cannot however rely on technology and human ingenuity alone, we need also to change our
production and consumption patterns. The human economy is bounded, so it would be entirely
counterproductive to seek economic growth that damages Nature for providing the necessary
finance for investment in R&D. If ‘business’ continues as before, consumption in high income
countries and in the emerging high-middle and low-middle income countries is projected to
remain the main factor driving the world’s ecological footprint. An important factor in our
ecological footprint is our diet. Diets rich in animal products have much higher footprints than
those based on plant products. If pastureland and land used for livestock feed are combined,
animal agriculture uses nearly 80% of global agricultural land. Moreover, greenhouse gas
emissions from plant-based food are 10 to 50 times less than those from animal products (Poore
and Nemecek, 2018). Regions differ substantially in their relative footprints. Estimates suggest
that if diets shifted away from animal products, it would be possible to feed the world’s present
population with as little as 50% of current agricultural land. Estimates also suggest that it would
not be possible to supply the world with environmentally intensive diets even if the Earth’s entire
land surface was converted to agriculture (Alexander et al. 2016).
19.2.2 Supply Chains and Trade
The expansion in global trade over the decades has run parallel with GDP. That has increased our
ecological footprint greatly; it has also given rise to transfers of wealth from primary producers
Part II: The Road Ahead
74 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
to importing countries (Box 17). It is therefore useful to study the effect of trade on the
biosphere by tracking entire supply chains.104
A shift to sustainable patterns of consumption and production will require us to embed
environmental considerations along entire supply chains. Transparency and the sharing of
information across supply chains is needed, and such information should be verifiable and
support the enforcement of standards (Review, Chapter 8). Novel technologies can help.
Improvements in geospatial data and implementation of ‘blockchains’ along entire supply chains
can help to raise transparency, for they display the impact of commodity production on local
ecosystems and individual species. Geospatial data combined with machine learning have been
used to estimate a global figure for the potential threat posed by extractive activities to natural
World Heritage Sites (WWF and Swiss Re Institute, 2020). They have also been used to monitor
Nature-related risks in sovereign debt investments (WWF and Investec, 2019). Certification
schemes can make a difference, but existing schemes differ in their effectiveness. WWF, for
example, compared various voluntary certification schemes in 2013 and concluded that their
socio-ecological performance varied substantially between schemes.105
Changes in broader trade practices and policies can support a shift to sustainability (Review,
Chapter 15). While there are limits to what market-correcting measures, such as taxes, are able
to achieve for reducing our ecological footprint, they can make a difference if they are applied
widely and designed well. Border Adjustment Taxes are an important example, but face both
technical and political problems. Sustainability provisions in regional trade agreements also
have potential, and there are encouraging signs that the number of regional trade agreements
featuring environmental provisions has increased over time. Similarly, financial commitments
to environmental objectives as part of aid expenditure directed at supporting trade have also
increased; today they account for approximately one-third of total aid (UNEP and WTO, 2018).
19.2.3 Pricing
The accounting price of an asset or service is the sum of its market price and the tax that ought
to be imposed on it.106 The gap between accounting prices and market prices is therefore a
measure of inefficiency in the allocation of goods and services: the gap reflects waste in our use
of resources. But unlike food waste (Box 7), the gap is not visible. The Review discusses various
ways available for estimating accounting prices. Open access resources such as ground water
and ocean fisheries are free, so their accounting prices are the taxes that ought to be imposed
on their use (Review, Chapter 7).
When reliable estimates of accounting prices are available, taxes can be a useful instrument for
reducing environmentally damaging behaviour. At present, no OECD or G20 country collects
more than 1% of its GDP in environmental taxes beyond those related to energy or motor
vehicles (OECD, 2019). There is scope, therefore, to raise further revenue through environmental
taxation. Such taxes need to be designed carefully, to avoid potential shifts to other activities
that damage Nature (leakage), to avoid the risk of crossing tipping points (if behaviour is
insufficiently influenced by the tax), and to ensure the environmental harm being taxed is
measured to a reasonable degree of accuracy.
There is also an urgent need to tackle perverse subsidies, which in total are equivalent to some
5-7% of global GDP (Box 9), implying that the accounting value of Nature must be greater
still. All prevailing subsidies have a historical rationale – distributional justice, national food
sufficiency, political pressure from powerful lobbies and so on – which is why they prove
104 Green et al. (2019), for example, have traced the habitat loss caused by consumption of soy to the product’s final destination.
105 Perhaps not surprisingly, in countries with weak governance there has been rapid growth of ineffective certification schemes
(WWF, 2013).
106 In a case where the ideal policy would be to subsidise the good, the accounting price would be the market price less the subsidy.
Part II: The Road Ahead
75The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
difficult to dislodge. But the resources that would become available to governments if they were
removed could be used to finance programmes that benefit not only populations at large, but
in particular the most vulnerable in society. Correcting inefficient economic distortions to resolve
institutional failures can serve the common good.
19.2.4 Future Population
Expanding human numbers have been a significant factor in the growth of our global footprint.
Global population is expected to continue to rise over this century (UNPD, 2019). In Part I, we
explained how individual fertility choices are influenced by the choices made by others. We
explored ways in which a society can become embedded in a self-sustaining mode of behaviour
characterised by high fertility and stagnant living standards, even when there are potentially self-
sustaining modes of behaviour that are characterised by low fertility and rising living standards.
As well as improving women’s access to finance, information and education, greater access to
community-based modern family planning and reproductive health programmes is a means
for women to have greater control over their lives, shift behaviours, and improve the chance of
having healthy babies.
The benefits of modern family planning and reproductive health programmes are high (Box 8).
But there has been significant under-investment in family planning to date. OECD estimates
suggest that less than 1% of Official Development Assistance (ODA) from the EU to Africa is
directed towards family planning. It has even been suggested that a dollar spent on family
planning and reproductive health is more beneficial than a dollar spent on agricultural research,
rotavirus vaccination, preschool education, trade facilitation, even mosquito nets (Kohler
and Behrman, 2018). As a route to accelerating the demographic transitions, investment
in community-based family planning and reproductive health programmes should now be
regarded as essential.
20 Measuring Economic Progress
Standard economic measures such as GDP can mislead. If the goal is to protect and promote
well-being across the generations (i.e. social well-being), governments should measure inclusive
wealth (a measure of societal means). Inclusive wealth is the sum of the accounting values
of produced capital, human capital, and natural capital. The measure corresponds directly to
well-being across the generations (Review, Section 17): if a change enhances social well-being,
it raises inclusive wealth; if the change diminishes social well-being, it reduces inclusive wealth.
Social well-being and inclusive wealth are not the same object, but they move in tandem. There
lies the value of inclusive wealth in economic accounts.
Natural capital accounting is a necessary step towards the creation of inclusive wealth accounts.
It enables us to understand and appreciate the place of Nature’s services in our economies,
including the services that are usually overlooked; it enables us to track the movement of natural
capital over time (a prerequisite for sustainability assessment); and it offers us a way to estimate
the impact of policies on natural capital (a prerequisite for policy analysis).
Frameworks for natural capital accounting and assessment are being developed, in many cases
through the UN’s System of Environmental and Economic Accounts. Countries are beginning
to incorporate natural capital and ecosystem services into national economic metrics of success.
China’s Gross Ecosystem Product, and New Zealand’s Living Standards Framework are examples
(Review, Chapters 12 and 13).
These are early days for natural capital accounts. Increased investment in physical accounts and
in ecosystem valuation would improve them. International cooperation in the construction of
national accounts and the sharing of data would improve decision-making around the world.
Harmonisation of national accounts should be coupled with technical assistance. Incorporating
Part II: The Road Ahead
76 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
natural capital accounts in macroeconomic surveillance undertaken by international financial
institutions – for example, the International Monetary Fund’s Article IV surveillance activities
(IMF, 2020) – would also send a strong signal, inspiring governments’ reform agendas to reflect
the scale and urgency of the problems societies face.
Whether we account for Nature in economic measures is key for how we interpret
productivity.107 Contemporary models of economic growth and development tend only to
consider produced and human capital as primary factors of production, not explicitly natural
capital (Review, Chapter 13). Typically, Total Factor Productivity estimates are biased upward
and should be treated with scepticism. Improving and using measures of productivity that
account for the use of, and impact on, Nature are crucial if we are to understand what improved
productivity means. There are several initiatives, such as the OECD’s greening productivity
measurement workstream (OECD, 2017a), that have made a start.
21 Transforming Our Institutions and Systems
Our global collective failure to achieve sustainability has its roots in our institutions. Many of the
institutions we have built have proved to be wholly unfit to curb our excesses; worse, they have
helped to enlarge the gap between what we are led to believe is possible and Nature’s bounded
capacity to respond to our demands. Effective institutions are the foundations on which to
rebuild our engagement with Nature and manage our assets. Beyond ensuring our institutions
are fit for purpose, including in relation to managing public goods, changes in two other
systems are particularly important: the global financial system and our education system.
In Section 17 we presented a general finding: neither top-down nor bottom-up institutional
structures work well. What the inhabitant of an ecosystem knows and can observe differs from
what an agent from the national government knows and can observe. Moreover, institutions
that work well are neither entirely rigid nor entirely flexible, they are both ‘polycentric’ and
‘layered’, meaning that knowledge and perspectives at all levels from different organisations,
communities and individuals are pooled and spread.
It is a commonplace assertion that we live in a highly interconnected world today. That has
been applauded over the years because the fruits of labour at one place have been transmitted
to other places in short order. Ideas and practices in one location are transmitted rapidly to
other locations through movements of people and goods. But adverse disturbances are also
transmitted rapidly. That has become cruelly evident in the rapid spread of COVID-19.
What makes for effective institutions has particular salience for the management of global public
goods. Beyond exclusive economic zones the oceans are a public good. They are also an open-
access common property of all nations.108 As they are a global public good (in the 1970s they
were called a Common Heritage of Mankind), the accounting rents from the issue of fishing
rights and charges levied on the use of the oceans for cruises and the transportation of goods
could be collected and shared among nations. A lively discussion took place in the 1970s of
the amount of global rents that could be collected in the form of a tax on ocean resources (e.g.
manganese nodules on the sea bed), the idea being that the tax could be used as development
aid. The proposed Global Ocean Treaty, currently under negotiation among UN members,
presents an opportunity to fill gaps in governance within existing supra-national arrangements
to address biodiversity monitoring and conservation.
Some ecosystems have the features of a global public good but are not a global common
because they are located within national boundaries. Tropical rainforests are an example.
107 The technical term for productivity of aggregate capital is Total Factor Productivity (Chapter 13).
108 By creating exclusive economic zones of up to 200 miles, the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea sought to eliminate
the incentives nations have to deplete ocean resources, but technological and geographical advantages mean that adverse
incentives remain.
Part II: The Road Ahead
77The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
Management of river basins that cover many countries are a regional example. It is right to
ask whether the fate of our economies, livelihoods and well-being should rest on national
sovereignty. A fairer approach would be to pay those countries for the protection of the
ecosystems on whose services we all rely. The 15th Conference of the Parties to the Convention
on Biological Diversity will agree on global goals post-2020. Nature is also an important
theme for the 26th Conference of the Parties of the UN Convention on Climate Change. These
conferences provide powerful opportunities to set a new direction for the coming decade.
22 The Global Financial System
Finance plays a crucial role. A significant portion of the responsibility for helping us to shift
course will fall on the global financial system. Governments, central banks, international financial
institutions (such as Multilateral Development Banks) and private financial institutions all have a
role to play in making the shift.
The problem is to encourage private financial institutions to take note of accounting prices, if
only implicitly. The qualification is required because market prices of natural capital are far from
their accounting prices. So indirect means are required. One such means is for governments and
international financial institutions to invest in Nature, which may involve directing investment
away from projects that degrade Nature and their unsustainable use. Projects that are
complementary to public investment would then be attractive to private financial institutions.
The financial system would be made to move its lending and credit activities also if consumers
signal their distaste for investments that are rapacious in the use of Nature’s goods and services.
Citizens can insist that firms disclose conditions along their supply chains (product labelling is
a partial method for doing that). Consumers could also boycott such products as those that do
not meet standards. Reputation matters to firms, and that can be exploited by citizens.
To leave Nature alone so that it is able to thrive is to invest in it. Governments have tools at their
disposal to make that happen, even if through indirect means. They range from taxes, subsidies,
regulations and prohibitions to Nature-specific mechanisms, such as payments for ecosystem
services (Box 13) and biodiversity offsetting schemes. While the relative share of biodiversity
funding within the overall budget for Official Development Assistance has increased in recent
years, existing flows are insufficient to meet conservation needs in developing countries.
Increasing those financial flows could take the form of debt forgiveness, direct grants or
technical assistance. The creation of binding targets on public investments in natural capital to
ensure that globally agreed objectives are met would go an important step further.
The risks associated with biodiversity loss – reductions in the productivity and resilience of
ecosystems along supply chains – have significant macroeconomic and financial implications.
Far more global support is needed for initiatives directed at enhancing the understanding and
awareness among financial institutions of Nature-related financial risks, learning and building
on the advances on climate-related financial risks. Central banks and financial supervisors can
support this by assessing the systemic extent of Nature-related financial risks. A set of global
standards is required. They should be underpinned by data that are both credible and useful for
decision-making. Businesses and financial institutions could then be obliged to integrate Nature-
related considerations with their other objectives. The idea ultimately is to have them assess
and disclose their use of natural capital. The Task Force on Nature-related Financial Disclosures,
established in 2020, is a step in that direction.
There is growing evidence that individual investors want investment providers to consider
sustainability and Nature in their investment decisions (UNEP and PRI, 2019). Integrating the
protection of biodiversity with the fiduciary duties of institutional investors and asset managers
would be a way to ensure their investment policies account for natural capital. One barrier to
this is myopia. Impacts of Nature’s diminution can be felt over long time-horizons. Fisheries
practices in the oceans will leave an imprint that will be felt by generations of future people.
Part II: The Road Ahead
78 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
Destruction of tropical rainforests is to all intents and purposes irreversible. The time horizon
within which financial actors plan and act is, unhappily, not more than a few years. Financial
regulators and supervisors can play a key role in the necessary shift by changing their own
assessment horizons and using their regulatory powers.
Many of the risks to life and property associated with ecological degradation are positively
correlated among those who are affected. If the loss of mangrove forests makes someone more
vulnerable to cyclones, it makes their neighbours more vulnerable also. Which is why there is
need for global, regional and national insurance funds. Although there are examples of regional
insurance schemes for environmental disasters (e.g. the African Risk Capacity and the Caribbean
Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility), there is currently no global insurance scheme. In principle, a
global risk pool – with contributions from all countries – could help protect vulnerable countries
against such shocks following extreme events. Emergency relief is not uncommon even at the
global level, but its volume is always uncertain. And it that comes after a disaster strikes a
community. Insurance, in contrast, is a security against disaster. Investing in Nature is a reliable
form of insurance.
23 Empowered Citizenship
Ultimately though, it is we citizens who can bring about such changes. As citizens, we need to
demand and shape the change we seek. 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), even boycotting products that do
not meet standards. Reputation matters, and that can be exploited by citizens. If we are not
acting now, it is because we have grown distant from Nature. Such detachment is in part a
symptom of societal change, including growing urbanisation, the profusion of technology, and
reduced access to green spaces. Detachment from Nature has meant a loss in our physical and
emotional state.
In their admirable survey of a growing literature on the role played by our direct experiences
of biodiversity with personal well-being, Capaldi et al. (2015) distinguish two aspects of those
experiences: contact with Nature and connectedness with Nature. The former could even
involve interaction with the natural world via indoor plants or from virtual representations of
Nature such as photographs or paintings of natural landscapes. The latter refers to a person’s
sense of connectedness with the natural world, it reflects the extent to which she internalises
the experiences she has with Nature. If contact with the natural world is a means to furthering
personal well-being, connectedness with Nature is an aspect of well-being itself.
Access to green spaces (they are local public goods) can also reduce socio-economic inequalities
in health. Interventions to increase people’s contact and connectedness with Nature would not
only improve our health and well-being, there is a growing body of evidence to suggest that
those interventions would also motivate us to make informed choices and demand change
(Review, Chapter 11).
There are glimmers of hope. Examples of Nature renewal in urban environments are one
(Box 13). That our desires and wants are to a significant extent socially embedded is also a
cause for hope that economising on the use of Nature’s provisioning services among the many
throughout the world who enjoy high material standards of living would prove to be personally
less costly than they fear, provided of course the economy is shared. Contemporary conceptions
of the human person cuts against the grains of our sociability; we are encouraged to imagine
that the thriftiness we may feel should be practised by all will fall on us unilaterally. That
probably explains why most of us do not act with our neighbours to practise it.
So, there are grounds for hope. The grounds no doubt have involved small initiatives so far, but
the economics of biodiversity is not the preserve of the large. The conception we would all wish
Part II: The Road Ahead
79The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
to adopt is grand, but it is ultimately we citizens who will determine whether we are able live in
peace with Nature.
24 Education
Our increasing detachment from Nature would seem to accompany the increasing detachment
of Nature from economic reasoning. Many view Nature almost entirely through an
anthropocentric lens, even while our physical interaction with and emotional attachment to
Nature declines. It would seem then that if we are to appreciate our place in Nature, we have to
educate ourselves.109 We would only then begin to appreciate the infinitely beautiful tapestry of
Nature’s processes and forms.
Every child in every country is owed the teaching of natural history, to be introduced to the awe
and wonder of the natural world, to appreciate how it contributes to our lives. Establishing the
natural world within educational policy would contribute to countering the shifting baseline,
whereby we progressively redefine ourselves as inhabitants of an emptying world and believe
that what we see is how it is and how it will continue to be. This shifting baseline has been
termed the ‘extinction of experience’ (Pyle, 2003).
Achieving tangible effects, however, is not straightforward. The development and design of
environmental education programmes can be directed to overcome the problems. Bawa et al.
(2020) have used agricultural colleges in India as examples to propose that their curricula should
now include ‘biodiversity science’. In their wide-ranging survey of documenting direct impacts of
environmental education, Ardoin, Bowers, and Gaillard (2020) have suggested that focusing on
local issues or locally relevant dimensions of broader issues, such as collaborating with scientists,
resource managers and community organisations, are of enormous help. The Review’s emphasis
on the role of communities and civil societies in the economics of biodiversity is consonant with
that line of thinking. 110
But even that would not be enough. Connecting with Nature needs to be woven throughout
our lives. The connection has been found to decline from childhood to an overall low in the
mid-teens, followed by a steady rise that reaches a plateau lasting the rest of one’s life (Hughes
et al. 2019). It is a cruel irony that we surround children with pictures and toys of animals and
plants, only to focus subsequently on more conceptual knowledge, marginalising environmental
education relative to the wider curriculum. Even if we had studied Nature in primary school,
we may not have encountered the subject subsequently.111 In US universities it was common
practice to require first-year students to complete a course on a broad-brush history of
civilisation. There is every reason universities should require new students to attend a course on
basic ecology. Field studies that would accompany such a course would be a way to connect
students with Nature, in particular those that may have grown up in an urban environment.
Understanding even the simplest of the biosphere’s processes may well be the first step toward
developing a love of Nature.
There is a further reason for connecting people with Nature at an early age. The three pervasive
features of Nature – mobility, silence and invisibility – mean that the consequences of actions
which desecrate Nature are often untraceable to those who are responsible. Neither the rule of
law nor the dictates of social norms are sufficient to make us account for Nature in our daily
practices. Institutional rules, no matter how well designed, would be insufficient for eliminating
109 We are grateful to Mary Colwell for preparing a note for us on the place of education in the economics of biodiversity.
This section is adapted from her piece.
110 In a study of institutions of higher education in India, Bawa et al. (2020) have advocated that agricultural colleges should now
include biodiversity science in their curricula.
111 There are signs of change. The charity iAfrica is experimenting with a digital education programme on Nature conservation in
schools in sub-Saharan Africa. In the UK, a GCSE in Natural History is expected to be introduced in England in 2022
Part II: The Road Ahead
80 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
environmental externalities. We will have to rely also on self-enforcement, that is, be our own
judge and jury. And that cannot happen without creating an environment in which, from an
early age, we are able to connect with Nature.
25 Nature’s Intrinsic Worth: Sacredness
The Review has developed the economics of biodiversity by viewing Nature in anthropocentric
terms. That is an altogether narrow viewpoint, but it has a justification. If, as we have shown in
Part I, Nature should be protected and promoted even when valued solely for its uses to us, we
would have even stronger reasons to protect and promote it if we were to acknowledge that it
has intrinsic value.112
Many people, perhaps in all societies, locate the sacred in Nature. And the sacred is not
negotiable, unless we are able to rationalise by imagining it to be incorruptible. The Ganges is
sacred to Hindus – she is known as Ma Ganga. And yet it is one of the most polluted rivers in
the world, being the sink into which industrial chemicals, household waste, agricultural runoff,
and cremation remains are fed. Many say there is no dissonance between the river’s sacredness
and its role as a carrier of human waste because being celestial, Ma Ganga is incorruptible.
It is common practice everywhere to rationalise when we are faced with contending needs
and wants.
We are able to avoid rationalising incompatible demands only when protecting the sacred is not
too costly. It is only then that we regard the sacred to be non-negotiable. In Benin, legislation
has enshrined the sanctity of sacred groves into law. Many social practices of communities there
rely on materials and resources drawn directly from forests: leaves, animals, water and stones.
Those areas are considered sacred because they have traditionally been seen to be inhabited
by deities or spirits. The sites also serve as spaces for rituals. Hunting is prohibited there, as is
setting fires to the groves. Traditionally, custody of sacred forests was entrusted to members of
a certain lineage. Logging and gathering plants for food and medicine were regulated by local
communities (Houngbo, 2019). Benin has nearly 3,000 sacred groves – covering an area of over
18,000 hectares, which accounts for 0.16% of the national territory. The groves themselves are
mostly small – only around 10% are larger than 5 hectares (Soury, 2007). Forests are, however,
disappearing in Benin: in 1990 they covered 50% of land, but today the figure is less than 40%.
Many today would regard an awareness of the sacred to encompass a sense of awe and wonder,
of a way to become aware of the transcendent. That is how we all try to locate ourselves from
time to time within the landscape around us, imagining what lies beyond. That sense is not
confined to what cosmopolitans might call ‘traditional cultures’. Some of the most sublime
songs of the poet Rabindranath Tagore have roots in the Vedanta, but they are detached from
the rituals that had been given expression in Vedic times. They invoke the transcendent, but they
are not tied to religion.
That sense of spirituality is often experienced today not only in isolation but also communally,
such as among ramblers, birdwatchers, mountain hikers, cyclists, surfers and divers (Grove-
White, 1992). The historian Simon Schama (1995) has argued that it is a mistake to think that
Western cultures have abandoned the spiritual aspects of the natural world, or that they have
abandoned the myths that were created around Nature. He showed that the transcendent has
been expressed repeatedly in art and architecture. Nature’s transcendence gives it a value that is
independent of us.
Although the sense of transcendence that Nature invokes may still exist everywhere, it has taken
a severe beating in modern times. Contending needs and wants have displaced our feeling that
112 We have benefited greatly from discussions on the intrinsic value of Nature with Simon Beard of the Centre for the Study of
Existential Risk at Cambridge, including on ways to conceptualise the moral value of Nature, with a view to showing us how to think
about these difficult matters, not what to think. The Review (Chapter 11) contains a sketch of his ideas.
Part II: The Road Ahead
81The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
by protecting the landscape we protect ourselves. The ability of richer societies to desecrate the
landscape elsewhere has helped to accommodate those conflicting feelings, and the discipline
of economics has increasingly aided that accommodation. Economic justification in high income
countries is all too often a euphemism for commercial justification; and in low income countries
the term ‘economic development’ is routinely used to justify blatantly unworthy investments.
That need not have been. Correct economic reasoning is entangled with our values. Biodiversity
does not only have instrumental value, it also has intrinsic worth – perhaps even moral worth.
Each of these senses is enriched when we recognise that we are embedded in Nature. To detach
Nature from economic reasoning is to imply that we consider ourselves to be external to Nature.
The fault is not in economics; it lies in the way we have chosen to practise it.
82 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
83The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
Annex 1 Safe Operating Distance From
Planetary Boundaries
Further evidence of the biosphere’s degradation is adduced from a study of Earth System
processes. The idea has been to identify processes of the biosphere that are critical for
maintaining the stable state we experienced in the past 11,000 years or so (the Holocene).
Rockstrom et al. (2009) identified nine biophysical processes that are critical for Earth System
functioning. The authors’ proposal was to set quantitative boundaries for each, beyond which
the Earth’s Holocene state would be put at further risk, making the move to the Anthropocene
firmer. The authors named the markers that may be used to check whether the processes are
undergoing rapid change, planetary boundaries. A planetary boundary is not equivalent to a
global threshold or tipping point. In any case, not all nine key processes are known to possess
single definable thresholds, and for those where a threshold is known to exist, there are
uncertainties about where they might lie. Boundaries are placed upstream of these thresholds at
the safe end of the zone of uncertainty.
Although not all the nine processes have single identifiable markers, crossing the boundaries
increases the risk of large-scale, potentially irreversible, environmental changes. Four of the
nine processes have taken the planet into regions the authors regard as outside safe operating
space, meaning that there are now increasing risk of a significant change from the biosphere’s
conditions in the Holocene. Biosphere integrity (for which one may read ‘biodiversity’) and
nitrogen and phosphorus cycles have exceeded their boundaries farthest. But land-use change
and climate change are also outside their safe operating space (Figure 22).
Unravelling the notion of biosphere integrity has proved problematic. As Figure 22 shows,
Rockstrom et al. (2009) had identified it with the extinction rate of species per million per
year (E/MSY). One problem with the use of this metric is that extinction rates are estimated
most often for vertebrate species (only amounting to <2% of described species). Mace et al.
(2014) have argued moreover that extinction rates do not reflect the genetic library of life,
nor the functional diversity of ecosystems, nor the conditions and coverage of Earth’s biomes.
The authors’ observations speak to the markers of biodiversity we explored in Chapters 2
and 3. We see below that those markers reflect ominous features of the Anthropocene. A new
boundary based on the Biodiversity Intactness Index (BII) is under development, but has yet to be
quantified (Steffen et al. 2015).
Annex 1 Safe Operating Distance From Planetary Boundaries
84 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
Figure 22 Critical Earth System Processes and Their Boundaries
Source: J. Lokrantz/Azote based on Steffen, W. et al. (2015) ‘Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing
planet’, Science, 347(6223:1–10). Note: P = phosphorus; N = nitrogen; BII = Biodiversity Intactness Index and E/MSY = extinctions
per million species per year.
A further respect in which the idea of planetary boundary has been extended is to study sub-
global boundaries. This is important because, as was noted in Chapter 2, crossing a boundary
at a regional level (e.g. destruction of the Amazon rainforest) can have implications for the
whole Earth System. Regional level boundaries have now been developed for biosphere integrity,
biogeochemical flows, land-use systems and freshwater use.
The idea of planetary boundaries has powerful heuristic appeal and has excited the
public’s imagination of the processes that govern the Earth System. It may have proved
to be a problematic concept, but it is a most useful classification of the Earth System’s
biogeochemical processes.
85The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
Annex 2 Why Common Pool Resources?
Why did communities not permit themselves to divide their local ecosystem and turn them
into private properties? One reason would have been the need to pool risks. Woodlands, for
example, are spatially heterogeneous ecosystems. Microclimate matters, as does variation in
soil quality. In some years one group of plants bears fruit in one part of a woodland, in other
years some other group of plants, in some other part, are fecund. Relative to average output,
fluctuations could be presumed to be larger in arid regions, mountain regions and unirrigated
areas. If a woodland was to be divided into private parcels, each household would face greater
risks than it would under communal ownership and mutual-regulation. The reduction in
individual household risks may be small, but as average incomes are very low in Indian villages,
household benefits from communal ownership and mutual enforcement of agreements could be
expected to be large. Communal ownership helps to pool risks.
An immediate corollary is that income inequality is smaller in those locations where CPRs
are more prominent. Aggregate incomes is a different matter, though, and it is the arid and
mountain regions and unirrigated landscapes that are the poorest. However, the dependence
on CPRs even within dry regions declines with increasing incomes across households. Theory
predicts it and case studies confirm it (Jodha, 1986, 2001; Cavendish, 2000).
Where users are symmetrically placed, distributions would be expected to be symmetric – a
subtle matter to devise if the resource is heterogeneous. Rotation of access to the best site is an
example of how that can be achieved. It is often practised in coastal fisheries, fuel reserves in
forest land, and fodder sites in the grasslands and mountain slopes (Netting, 1981; Baland and
Platteau, 1996). Rotation enables users to get a fair share.
It would be possible in principle for the community to parcel out the resource as private
property and let households establish a mutual insurance scheme. But that move would
jeopardise cooperation in other activities. For at least two reasons. First, cooperation appears
to be habit forming, which means dispensing with cooperation in any one activity could lead
to a weakening of cooperation in other activities. Secondly, cooperation is more robust when
sanctions for opportunism in any one venture include exclusions not only from that venture,
but also from other collective ventures. Abandoning cooperation in one field of activity thus
reduces the robustness of cooperation in other fields of activity. This fact is an implication of the
theory of games. It explains why economic relationships are so frequently tied to one another
(Dasgupta, 2007).
Local ecosystems are frequently CPRs also because animals, birds and insects are mobile.
Mobility integrates an ecosystem’s components. A coastal ecosystem can hardly be split into
bits: fish swim. In Section 2 it was also noted that the productivity of ecosystems is greater than
the sum of the productivities of their spatial parts. Ecosystems therefore have an element of
indivisibility to them. But even if it was decreed that no portion could be converted for another
use, parcelling ecosystems into private bits would be inefficient because of the externalities that
would be created by mobile components. Communal ownership internalises those externalities.
Admittedly, private monopoly would avoid the externalities, but it would grant far too much
power to one person in the community.
Agricultural land, especially in densely populated areas, is a different matter. Both labour and
capital are critical inputs in production. Investment can increase land’s productivity enormously.
Agricultural land as CPRs would be subject to serious management problems, including those
due to the temptations to free ride on investment costs. The lack of incentives to invest and
innovate would lead to stagnation, even decay. The experience with collective farms in what was
previously the Soviet Union testifies to that. Those regions of sub-Saharan Africa where land is,
or was until recently, held by the kinship were exceptions, but only because land was plentiful
Annex 2 Why Common Pool Resources?
86 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
in the past and because poor soil quality meant that land had to be kept fallow for extended
periods. Of course, it may be that agricultural productivity remained low there because land was
held by the kinship, not by individuals. As elsewhere in the social sciences, causation typically
works in both directions.
87The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
References
Agarwal, A., and S. Narain (1992), ‘Towards Green Villages, A Strategy for Environmentally
Sound and Participatory Rural Development’, Environment and Urbanization, 4(1), 53–64.
Agarwal, A., and S. Narain (1999), ‘Community and Household Water Management: The Key
to Environmental Regeneration and Poverty Alleviation’, Poverty and Environment Initiative
Background Paper 2 (New York, NY: UNDP).
Agarwal, B. (1986), Cold Hearths and Barren Slopes: The Woodfuel Crisis in the Third World
(Delhi: Allied Publishers).
Agarwal, B. (2001), ‘Participatory Exclusions, Community Forest, and Gender: An Analysis for
South Asia and Conceptual Framework’, World Development, 29(10), 1623–1648.
Alexander, P., C. Brown, A. Arneth, J. Finnigan, and M. D. A. Rounsevell (2016), ‘Human
Appropriation of Land for Food: The Role of Diet’, Global Environmental Change, 41, 88–98.
Alexander, P., A. Berri, D. Moran, D. Reay, and M. D. A. Rounsevell (2020), ‘The Global
Environmental Paw Print of Pet Food’, Global Environmental Change, 65, 102153.
Andres, L. A., M. Thibert, C. L. Cordoba, A. V. Danilenko, G. Joseph, and C. Borja-Vega (2019),
Doing More with Less: Smarter Subsidies for Water Supply and Sanitation.
Ansar, A., B. Flyvbjerg, A. Budzier, and D. Lunn (2014), ‘Should We Build More Large Dams?
The Actual Costs of Hydropower Megaproject Development’, Energy Policy, 69, 43–56.
Ardoin, N. M., A. W. Bowers, and E. Gaillard (2020), ‘Environmental Education Outcomes for
Conservation: A Systematic Review’, Biological Conservation, 241, e108224.
Arrow, K. J. (2000), ‘Observations on Social Capital’, in P. Dasgupta and I. Serageldin, eds., Social
Capital: A Multifaceted Perspective (Washington, DC: World Bank).
Arrow, K. J., P. Dasgupta, L. Goulder, G. Daily, P. Ehrlich, G. Heal, S. Levin, K.-G. Mäler, S.
Schneider, D. Starrett, and B. Walker (2004), ‘Are We Consuming Too Much?’, Journal of
Economic Perspectives, 18(3), 147–172.
Arrow, K. J., P. Dasgupta, L. H. Goulder, K. J. Mumford, and K. Oleson (2012), ‘Sustainability and
the Measurement of Wealth’, Environment and Development Economics, 17(3), 317–353.
Arrow, K. J., P. Dasgupta, L. H. Goulder, K. J. Mumford, and K. Oleson (2013), ‘Sustainability and
the Measurement of Wealth: Further Reflections’, Environment and Development Economics,
18(4), 504–516.
Arrow, K. J., P. Dasgupta, and K.-G. Mäler (2003a), ‘Evaluating Projects and Assessing
Sustainable Development in Imperfect Economies’, Environmental and Resource Economics,
26, 647–685.
Arrow, K. J., P. Dasgupta, and K.-G. Mäler (2003b), ‘The Genuine Savings Criterion and the Value
of Population’, Economic Theory, 21(2/3), 217–225.
Bakan, J. (2020), The New Corporation: How ‘Good’ Corporations Are Bad for Democracy (New
York, NY: Vintage).
Baland, J.-M., and J.-P. Platteau (1996), Halting Degradation of Natural Resources: Is There
a Role for Rural Communities? (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Baland, J.-M., and J.-P.
Platteau (1999), ‘The Ambiguous Impact of Inequality and Collective Action in Local Resource
Management’, World Development, 27(5), 773–788.
References
88 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
Baragwanath, K., and E. Bayi (2020), ‘Collective Property Rights Reduce Deforestation in the
Brazilian Amazon’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(34), 20495–20502.
Bawa, K. S., N. Nawn, R. Chellam, J. Krishnaswamy, V. Mathur, S. B. Olsson, N. Pandit, P.
Rajagopal, M. Sankaran, R. U. Shaankar, D. Shankar, U. Ramakrishnan, A. T. Vanak, and S.
Quader (2020), ’Opinion: Envisioning a Biodiversity Science for Sustaining Human Well-Being’,
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(42), 25951-25955.
Barbier, E. B. (2005), Natural Resources and Economic Development (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press).
Barbier, E. B. (2011), Scarcity and Frontiers: How Economies Have Developed Through Natural
Resource Exploitation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Barbarossa, V., R. J. P. Schmitt, M. A. J. Huijbregts, C. Zarfl, H. King, and A. M. Schipper (2020),
‘Impacts of Current and Future Large Dams on the Geographic Range Connectivity of Freshwater
Fish Worldwide’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(7), 3648–3655.
Bar-On, Y. M., R. Phillips, and R. Milo (2018), ‘The Biomass Distribution on Earth’, Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences, 115(25), 6506–6511.
Barrett, S. (2003), Environment and Statecraft: The Strategy of Environmental Treaty-Making
(Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Barrett, S. (2012), ‘Credible Commitments, Focal Points and Tipping: The Strategy of Climate
Treaty Design’, in R. Hahn and A. Ulph, eds., Climate Change and Common Sense: Essays in
Honour of Tom Schelling (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Barrett, S. (2015), ‘Why Have Climate Negotiations Proved So Disappointing?’ in P. Dasgupta,
R. Ramanathan, and S. Sorondo, eds., Sustainable Humanity, Sustainable Nature: Our
Responsibility (Vatican City: Vatican Press).
Barrett, S., A. Dasgupta, P. Dasgupta, W. N. Adger, J. Anderies, J. van den Bergh, C. Bledsoe, J.
Bongaarts, S. Carpenter, F. S. Chapin III, A.-S. Crépin, G. Daily, P. Ehrlich, C. Folke, N. Kautsky,
E. F. Lambin, S. A. Levin, K.-G. Mäler, R. Naylor, K. Nyborg, S. Polasky, M. Scheffer, J. Shogren,
P. S. Jørgensen, B. Walker, and J. Wilen (2020), ‘Social Dimensions of Fertility Behavior and
Consumption Patterns in the Anthropocene’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
117(12), 6300–6307.
Beach, T., S. Luzzadder-Beach, and N. P. Dunning (2019), ‘Out of the Soil: Soil (Dark Matter
Biodiversity) and Societal ‘Collapses’ from Mesoamerica to Mesopotamia and Beyond’, in
P. Dasgupta, P. H. Raven, and A. L. McIvor, eds., Biological Extinction: New Perspectives
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Beck, T., and C. Nesmith (2001), ‘Building on Poor People’s Capacities: The Case of Common
Property Resources in India and West Africa’, World Development, 29(1), 119–133.
Béné, C., G. Macfadyen, and E. H. Allison (2007), ‘Increasing the Contribution of Small-Scale
Fisheries to Poverty Alleviation and Food Security’, FAO Fisheries Technical Paper, No. 481.
Béteille, A. ed., (1983), Equality and Inequality: Theory and Practice (Oxford: Oxford
University Press).
Blackburn, S. (2003), Ethics: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Bongaarts, J. (2011), ‘Can Family Planning Programs Reduce High Desired Family Size in
Sub-Saharan Africa?’, International Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health,
37(4), 209–216.
References
89The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
Bongaarts, J. (2016), ‘Development: Slow Down Population Growth’, Nature,
530(7591), 409–412.
Bongaarts, J., and J. Casterline (2013), ‘Fertility Transition: Is Sub-Saharan Africa Different?’,
Population and Development Review, 38(Suppl. 1), 153–168.
Bolt, J., R. Inklaar, H. de Jong and J. L. van Zanden (2018), Rebasing ‘Maddison’: New Income
Comparisons and the Shape of Long-run Economic Development, Maddison Project Working
Paper 10.
Bourdieu, P. (1984), Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul).
Breslin, P., and M. Chapin (1984), ‘Conservation Kuna-style’, Grassroots Development,
8(2), 26–35.
Bromley, D. W. ed., (1992), Making the Commons Work: Theory, Practice, and Policy (San
Francisco, CA: ICS Press).
Brundtland, G. H. (1987), Our Common Future: Report of the World Commission on
Environment and Development (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Campbell, B., A. Mandondo, N. Nemarundwe, B. Sithole, W. De Jong, M. Luckert, and F. Matose
(2001), ‘Challenges to Proponents of Common Property Recource Systems: Despairing Voices
from the Social Forests of Zimbabwe’, World Development, 29(4), 589–600.
Capaldi, C. A., H.-A. Passmore, E. K. Nisbet, J. M. Zelenski, and R. L. Dopko (2015), ‘Flourishing
in Nature: A Review of the Benefits of Connecting with Nature and its Application as a Wellbeing
Intervention’, International Journal of Wellbeing, 5(4), 1–16.
Carpenter, S. R., D. Ludwig, and W. A. Brock (1999), ‘Management of Eutrophication for Lakes
Subject to Potentially Irreversible Change’, Ecological Applications, 9(3), 751–771.
Cavendish, W. (2000), ‘Empirical Regularities in the Poverty-Environment Relationship of Rural
Households: Evidence from Zimbabwe’, World Development, 28(11), 1979–2003.
Ceballos, G., A. H. Ehrlich, and P. R. Ehrlich (2015), The Annihilation of Nature: Human
Extinction of Birds and Mammals (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press).
Ceballos, G., P. R. Ehrlich, and P. H. Raven (2020), ‘Vertebrates on the Brink as Indicators of
Biological Annihilation and the Sixth Mass Extinction’, Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, 117(24), 13596–13602.
Chichilnisky, G. (1994), ‘North-South Trade and the Global Environment’, The American
Economic Review, 84(4), 851–874.
Cialdini, R. (1984), Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (New York: Harper Collins).
Cleland, J., S. Bernstein, A. Ezeh, A. Faundes, A. Glasier, and J. Innis (2006), ‘Family Planning:
The Unfinished Agenda’, The Lancet, 368(9549), 1810-1827.
Coady, D., I. Parry, N.-P. Le, and B. Shang (2019), ‘Global Fossil Fuel Subsidies Remain Large. An
Update Based on Country-Level Estimates’, IMF Working Paper 19/89.
Coleman, J. S. (1988), ‘Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital’, American Journal of
Sociology, 94, S95–S120.
Cordell, J., and M. McKean (1985), ‘Sea tenure in Bahia, Brazil’, Proceedings of the Conference
on Common Property Resource Management, April, 85-114.
Crutzen, P. J. and E. F. Stoermer (2000), ‘The “Anthropocene”’, Global Change Newsletter,
41, 17–18.
References
90 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
Costanza, R., R. d’Arge, R. De Groot, S. Farber, M. Grasso, B. Hannon, K. Limburg, S. Naeem,
R. V. O’Neill, J. Paruelo, R. G. Raskin, P. Sutton, and M. van den Belt (1997), ‘The Value of the
World’s Ecosystem Services and Natural Capital’, Nature, 387(6630), 253–260.
Daily, G. C., and P. R. Ehrlich (1996), ‘Global Change and Human Susceptibility to Disease’,
Annual Review of Energy and the Environment, 21, 125–44.
Dasgupta, Aisha (2021), ‘Contraception, Avortement, Droits Reproductifs’, in Y. Charbit, ed.,
Dynamiques démographiques et développement (Paris/London: ISTE), forthcoming 2021.
Dasgupta, Aisha and P. Dasgupta (2017), ‘Socially Embedded Preferences, Environmental
Externalities, and Reproductive Rights’, Population and Development Review, 43(3), 405–441.
Dasgupta, Aisha and P. Dasgupta (2021), ‘Population Overshoot’, in G. Arrhenius, K. Bykvist, and
T. Campbell, eds., Oxford Handbook of Population Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Dasgupta, P. (1990), ‘The Environment as a Commodity’, Oxford Review of Economic Policy,
6(1), 51–67.
Dasgupta, P. (2004), Human Well-Being and the Natural Environment (Oxford: Oxford
University Press).
Dasgupta, P. (2007), Economics: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Dasgupta, P. (2008), ‘Discounting Climate Change’, Journal of Risk and Uncertainty,
37(2-3), 141-169.
Dasgupta, P. (2019), Time and the Generations: Population Ethics for a Diminishing Planet (New
York, NY: Columbia University Press).
Dasgupta, P., and K.-G. Mäler (2000), ‘Net National Product, Wealth, and Social Well-Being’,
Environment and Development Economics, 5(1/2), 69–93.
Dasgupta, P., T. Mitra, and G. Sorger (2019), ‘Harvesting the Commons’, Environmental and
Resource Economics, 72(3), 613–636.
Dasgupta, P., and I. Serageldin, eds. (2000), Social Capital: A Multifaceted Perspective
(Washington, DC: World Bank).
De Vos, J. M., L. N. Joppa, J. L. Gittleman, P. R. Stephens, and S. L. Pimm (2014), ‘Estimating the
Normal Background Rate of Species Extinction’, Conservation Biology, 29(2), 452–462.
Deutz, A., G. M. Heal, R. Niu, E. Swanson, T. Townsend, L. Zhu, A. Delmar, A. Meghji,
S. A. Sethi, and J. Tobin-de la Puente (2020), Financing Nature: Closing the Global Biodiversity
Financing Gap.
Diamond, J. (2005), Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (London: Viking Press).
Dobson, A. P., S. L. Pimm, L. Hannah, L. Kaufman, J. A. Ahumada, A. W. Ando, A. Bernstein, J.
Busch, P. Daszak, J. Engelmann, M. F. Kinnaird, B. V. Li, T. Loch-Temzelides, T. Lovejoy, K. Nowak,
P. R. Roehrdanz, and M. M. Vale (2020), ‘Ecology and Economics for Pandemic Prevention’,
Science, 369(6502), 379–381.
Drupp, M. A., M. C. Freeman, B. Groom, and F. Nesje (2018), ‘Discounting Disentangled’,
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 10(4), 109–134.
Duarte, C. M., S. Agusti, E. Barbier, G. L. Britten, J. C. Castilla, J.-P. Gattuso, R. W. Fulweiler,
T. P. Hughes, N. Knowlton, C. E. Lovelock, H. K. Lotze, M. Predragovic, E. Poloczanska,
C. Roberts, and B. Worm (2020a), ‘Rebuilding Marine Life’, Nature, 580(7801), 39–51.
References
91The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
Duarte, C. M., S. Agusti, E. Barbier, G. L. Britten, J. C. Castilla, J.-P. Gattuso, R. W. Fulweiler,
T. P. Hughes, N. Knowlton, C. E. Lovelock, H. K. Lotze, M. Predragovic, E. Poloczanska,
C. Roberts, and B. Worm (2020b), ‘Rebuilding Marine Life: Supplementary Information’, Nature,
580(7801), 39–51.
Duarte, C. M., I. Poiner and J. Gunn (2018), ‘Perspectives on a Global Observing System to
Assess Ocean Health’, Frontiers in Marine Science, 5(265), 1-9.
Ebeling, F., and S. Lotz (2015), ‘Domestic Uptake of Green Energy Promoted by Opt-out Tariffs’,
Nature Climate Change, 5, 868–871.
Ehrlich, P. R., and J. P. Holdren (1971), ‘Impact of Population Growth’, Science, 171(3977),
1212–1217.
Eichengreen, B. (2010), ‘Lessons from the Marshall Plan’, World Bank, World Development
Report 2011 Background Paper.
De Long, J. B. and B. Eichengreen (1991), ‘The Marshall Plan: History’s Most Successful
Structural Adjustment Program’, National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper,
No. 3899.
Elert, E. (2014), ‘Rice by the Numbers: A Good Grain’, Nature, 514(7524), S50–S51.
Ermakova, M., F. R. Danila, R. T. Furbank, and S. von Caemmerer (2019), ‘On the Road to C4 Rice:
Advances and Perspectives’, The Plant Journal, 101(4), 940–950.
FAO (2014), Sustainability Pathways (Rome: FAO).
FAO (2019), The State of Food and Agriculture 2019. Moving Forward on Food Loss and Waste
Reduction (Rome: FAO).
FAO (2020), The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2020. Sustainability in Action
(Rome: FAO).
Falconer, J., and C. R. S. Koppell (1990), ‘The Major Significance of “Minor” Forest Products:
The Local Use and Value of Forests in the West African Humid Forest Zone’, Community Forestry
Note 6 (Rome: FAO).
Feeny, D., F. Berkes, B. J. McCay, and J. M. Acheson (1990), ‘The Tragedy of the Commons:
Twenty-Two years later’, Human Ecology, 18(1), 1-19.
Field, C. B., M. J. Behrenfeld, J. T. Randerson, and P. Falkowski (1998), ‘Primary Productivity of
the Biosphere: Integrating Terrestrial and Oceanic Components’, Science, 281(5374), 237–240.
Finley, M. I. (2002), The World of Odysseus, 2nd ed. (London: Folio Society).
Foley, J. A., N. Ramankutty, K. A. Brauman, E. S. Cassidy, J. S. Gerber, M. Johnston, N. D. Mueller,
C. O’Connell, D. K. Ray, P. C. West, C. Balzer, E. M. Bennett, S. R. Carpenter, J. Hill, C. Monfreda,
S. Polasky, J. Rockström, J. Sheehan, S. Siebert, D. Tilman, and D. Zaks (2011), ‘Solutions for a
Cultivated Planet’, Nature, 478(7369), 337–342.
Folke, C., S. Carpenter, B. Walker, M. Scheffer, T. Elmqvist, L. Gunderson, and C. S. Holling
(2004), ‘Regime Shifts, Resilience, and Biodiversity in Ecosystem Management’, Annual Review
of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, 35(1), 557–581.
FP2020 (2019), Women at the Center 2018–2019.
Freeman III, A. M. (2003), The Measurement of Environmental and Resource Values: Theory and
Methods, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: Resources for the Future).
Fukuyama, F. (1995), Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity, (London:
Hamish Hamilton).
References
92 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
Gibbs, H. K., A. S. Ruesch, F. Achard, M. K. Clayton, P. Holmgren, N. Ramankutty, and J. A. Foley
(2010), ‘Tropical Forests Were the Primary Sources of New Agricultural Land in the 1980s and
1990s’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(38), 16732–16737.
Gordon, H. S. (1954), ‘The Economic Theory of a Common-Property Resource: The Fishery’,
Journal of Political Economy, 62(2), 124-142.
Gore, A. (1992), Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit (New York, NY:
Houghton Mifflin).
Granato, J., R. Inglehart, and D. Leblang (1996), ‘The Effect of Cultural Values on Economic
Development: Theory, Hypotheses, and Some Empirical Tests’, American Journal of Political
Science, 40(3), 607–631.
Grove-White, R. (1992), ‘The Christian “Person” and Environmental Concern’, Studies in Christian
Ethics, 5(2), 1-17.
Green, J. M. H., S. A. Croft, A. P. Durán, A. P. Balmford, N. D. Burgess, S. Fick, T. A. Gardner, J.
Godar, C. Suavet, M. Virah-Sawmy, L. E. Young, and C. D. West (2019), ‘Linking Global Drivers
of Agricultural Trade to On-The-Ground Impacts on Biodiversity’, Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences, 116(46), 23202–23208.
Guttmacher Institute (2020), Adding It Up: Investing in Sexual and Reproductive Health 2019
(New York, NY: Guttmacher Institute).
Hanson, C., and P. Mitchell (2017), The Business Case for Reducing Food Loss and Waste: A
Report on Behalf of Champions 12.3.
Haque, A. K. E., M. N. Murty, and P. Shyamsundar (2011), Environmental Valuation in South Asia
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Hardin, G. (1968), ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’, Science, 162(3859), 1243–1248.
Hecht, S. B., A. B. Anderson, and P. May (1988), ‘The Subsidy from Nature: Shifting Cultivation,
Successional Palm Forests, and Rural Development’, Human Organization, 47(1), 25–35.
Hepburn, C., B. O’Callaghan, N. Stern, J. Stiglitz, D. Zenghelis (2020), ‘Will COVID-19 Fiscal
Recovery Packages Accelerate or Retard Progress on Climate Change?’ Oxford Review of
Economic Policy, 36(S1), S359-S381.
Houngbo, E. N. (2019), ‘Box 2.1 Sacred Spaces: A Tradition of Forest Conservation in Benin’, in
J. W. Wilson, and R. B. Primack, eds., Conservation Biology in Sub-Saharan Africa (Cambridge:
Open Book Publishers).
Howe, J. (1986), The Kuna Gathering: Contemporary Village Politics in Panama (Austin, TX:
University of Texas Press).
Hubbell, S. P. (2015), ‘Estimating the Global Number of Tropical Tree Species, and Fisher’s
Paradox’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(4), 7343–7344.
Hughes, J., M. Rogerson, J. Barton, and R. Bragg (2019), ‘Age and Connection to Nature: When
is Engagement Critical?’, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 17(5), 265–269.
IMF (2020), ‘IMF Surveillance’, ‘https://www.imf.org/en/About/Factsheets/IMF-Surveillance’.
IPBES (2019a), Summary for Policymakers of the Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity
and Ecosystem Services of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and
Ecosystem Services, S. Díaz, J. Settele, E. S. Brondízio E.S., H. T. Ngo, M. Guèze, J. Agard, A.
Arneth, P. Balvanera, K. A. Brauman, S. H. M. Butchart, K. M. A. Chan, L. A. Garibaldi, K. Ichii, J.
Liu, S. M. Subramanian, G. F. Midgley, P. Miloslavich, Z. Molnár, D. Obura, A. Pfaff, S. Polasky, A.
References
93The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
Purvis, J. Razzaque, B. Reyers, R. Roy Chowdhury, Y. J. Shin, I. J. Visseren-Hamakers, K. J. Willis,
and C. N. Zayas, eds. (Bonn: IPBES Secretariat).
IUCN (2020), IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2020-2, ‘https://www.iucnredlist.org/’.
Jodha, N. S. (1986), ‘Common Property Resources and Rural Poor in Dry Regions of India’,
Economic and Political Weekly, 21(27), 1169–1181.
Jordà, Ò., K. Knoll, D. Kuvshinov, M. Schularick, and A. M. Taylor (2019), ‘The Rate of Return on
Everything, 1870-2015’, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 134(3), 1225-1298.
Juma, C. (2019), ‘Game Over?: Drivers of Biological Extinction in Africa’, in P. Dasgupta, P. H.
Raven, and A. L. McIvor, eds., Biological Extinction: New Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press).
Kareiva, P., H. Tallis, T. H. Ricketts, G. C. Daily, and S. Polasky (2011), Natural Capital: The Theory
and Practice of Mapping Ecosystem Services (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Klein Goldewijk, K., A. Benseu, J. Doelman, and E. Stehfest (2017), ‘Anthropogenic Land Use
Estimates for the Holocene – HYDE 3.2,’ Earth System Science Data, 9, 927-953.
Kneese, A. V., R. U. Ayres, and R. C. d’Arge (1970), Economics and the Environment: A Materials
Balance Approach (Washington, DC: Resources for the Future).
Kohler, H.-P., J. R. Behrman (2014), ‘Benefits and Costs of the Population and Demography
Targets for the Post-2015 Development Agenda’ (Copenhagen Consensus Center).
Kohler, H.-P., J. R. Behrman, and S. C. Watkins (2001), ‘The Density of Social Networks and
Fertility Decisions: Evidence from South Nyanza District, Kenya’, Demography, 38, 43–58.
Kolbert, E. (2014), The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (New York: Henry Holt
and Company).
Laurance, W. F., T. E. Lovejoy, H. L. Vasconcelos, E. M. Bruna, R. K. Didham, P. C. Stouffer,
C. Gascon, R. O. Bierregaard, S. G. Laurance, and E. Sampaio (2002) ‘Ecosystem Decay of
Amazonian Forest Fragments: A 22-Year Investigation’, Conservation Biology, 16(3), 605–618.
Laurance, W. F., J. L. C. Camargo, R. C. C. Luizão, S. G. Laurance, S. L. Pimm, E. M. Bruna, P.
C. Stouffer, G. B. Williamson, J. Benitez-Malvido, H. L. Vasconcelos, K. S. Van Houtan, C. E.
Zartman, S. A. Boyle, R. K. Didham, A. Andrade, and T. E. Lovejoy (2011), ‘The Fate of the
Amazonian Forest Fragments: A 32-Year Investigation,’ Biological Conservation, 144(1), 56-67.
Lin, D., L. Wambersie, M. Wackernagel, and P. Hanscom (2020), ‘Calculating Earth Overshoot
Day 2020: Estimates Point to August 22nd’, ‘https://www.overshootday.org/content/
uploads/2020/06/Earth-Overshoot-Day-2020-Calculation-Research-Report.pdf’.
Lomborg, B. (2013), How Much Have Global Problems Cost the World?: A Scorecard from
1900 to 2050. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
López, R. (1998), ‘The Tragedy of the Commons in Cote d’Ivoire Agriculture: Empirical Evidence
of for Evaluating Trade Policies’, World Bank Development Review, 12(1), 105-131.
Lovejoy, T. E., and L. Hannah (2019), Biodiversity and Climate Change: Transforming the
Biosphere (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press).
Lovejoy, T. E. and C. Nobre (2018), ‘Amazon Tipping Point’, Science Advances, 4(2), eaat2340.
Lugato, E., A. Leip, and A. Jones (2018), ‘Mitigation Potential of Soil Carbon Management
Overestimated by Neglecting N2O Emissions,’ Nature Climate Change, 8, 219-223.
Lynch, J. (2019), Zealandia: The Valley that Changed a Nation (Aotearoa: Kotare Publications).
References
94 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
MA – Millennium Ecosystem Assessment – eds., R. Hassan, R. Scholes, and N. Ash (2005a),
Ecosystems and Human Well-Being, I: Current State and Trends (Washington, DC: Island Press).
MA – Millennium Ecosystem Assessment – eds., S.R. Carpenter, P.L. Pingali, E.M. Bennet,
and M.B. Zurek (2005b), Ecosystems and Human Well-Being, II: Scenarios (Washington, DC:
Island Press).
MA – Millennium Ecosystem Assessment – eds., K. Chopra, R. Leemans, P. Kumar, and H.
Simmons (2005c), Ecosystems and Human Well-Being, III: Policy Responses (Washington, DC:
Island Press).
MA – Millennium Ecosystem Assessment – eds., D. Capistrano, C. Samper K., M.J. Lee, and
C. Randsepp-Hearne (2005d), Ecosystems and Human Well-Being, IV: Multiscale Assessments
(Washington, DC: Island Press).
Mace, G. M., B. Reyers, R. Alkemade, R. Biggs, F. S. Chapin, S. E. Cornell, S. Díaz, S. Jennings,
P. Leadley, P. J. Mumby, A. Purvis, R. J. Scholes, A. W. R. Seddon, M. Solan, W. Steffen, and
G. Woodward (2014), ‘Approaches to Defining a Planetary Boundary for Biodiversity’, Global
Environmental Change, 28(1), 289–297.
Maddison, A. (2018). Maddison Project Database 2018.
Mäler, K. -G. (1974), Environmental Economics: A Theoretical Inquiry (Baltimore, MD: Johns
Hopkins University Press).
Managi, S., and P. Kumar (2018), Inclusive Wealth Report 2018: Measuring Progress Towards
Sustainability (New York, NY: Routledge).
McKean, M. A. (1992), ‘Success on the Commons: A Comparative Examination of Institutions for
Common Property Resource Management’, Journal of Theoretical Politics, 4(3), 247–281.
Micklethwait, J., and A. Wooldridge (2003), A Future Perfect: The Challenge and Promise of
Globalization (New York, NY: Random House).
Miller, G., and K. S. Babiarz (2016), ‘Family Planning Program Effects: Evidence from Microdata’,
Population and Development Review, 42(1), 7–26.
Mukhopadhyay, P. (2008), ‘Heterogeneity, Commons, and Privatization: Agrarian Institutional
Change in Goa’, in R. Ghate, N.S. Jodha, and P. Mukhopadhyay, eds., (2008), Promise, Trust and
Evolution: Managing the Commons of South Asia (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Munshi, K., and J. Myaux (2006), ‘Social Norms and the Fertility Transition’, Journal of
Development Economics, 80(1), 1–38.
NCB (2003), The Use of Genetically Modified Crops in Developing Countries: A Follow Up
Discussion (London: Nuffield Council of Bioethics).
Norberg, J. (2016), Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to The Future (London:
Oneworld Publications).
Nordhaus, W. D. (1994), Managing the Global Commons: The Economics of Climate Change
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
O’Neill, B. C., M. Dalton, R. Fuchs, L. Jiang, S. Pachauri, and K. Zigova (2010), ‘Global
Demographic Trends and Future Carbon Emissions’, Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, 107(41), 17521–17526.
O’Neill, D. W., A. L. Fanning, W. F. Lamb, J. K. Steinberger (2018), ‘A Good Life for All Within
Planetary Boundaries’, Nature Sustainability, 1, 88-95.
OECD (2017a), Green Growth Indicators.
References
95The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
OECD (2017b), Reforming Agricultural Subsidies to Support Biodiversity in Switzerland.
OECD (2019), Revenue Statistics 2019.
OECD (2020), A Comprehensive Overview of Global Biodiversity Finance.
Orgiazzi, A., R. D. Bardgett, E. Barrios, V. Behan-Pelletier, M. J. I. Briones, J. L. Chotte, G. B. de
Deyn, P. Eggleton, N. Fierer, T. Fraser, K. Hedlund, S. Jeffery, N. C. Johnson, A. Jones, E. Kandeler,
N. Kaneko, P. Lavelle, P. Lemanceau, L. Miko, L. Montanarella, F. M. S. Moreira, K. S. Ramirez,
S. Scheu, B. K. Singh, J. Six, W. H. van der Putten, and D. H. Wall (2016), Global Soil Biodiversity
Atlas (Luxembourg: European Union).
Orgiazzi, A., C. Ballabio, P. Panagos, A. Jones, and O. Fernández-Ugalde (2018), ‘LUCAS Soil,
the Largest Expandable Soil Dataset for Europe: A Review’, European Journal of Soil Science,
69(1), 140–153.
Ostrom, E. (1990), Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Ostrom, E. (2010), ‘Beyond Markets and States: Polycentric Governance of Complex Economic
Systems’, American Economic Review, 100(3), 641–672.
Pagiola, S., A. R. Rios, and A. Arcenas (2008), ‘Can the Poor Participate in Payments for
Environmental Services? Lessons from the Silvopastoral Project in Nicaragua’, Environment and
Development Economics, 13(3), 299–325.
Pattanayak, S. K., and E. O. Sills (2001), ‘Do Tropical Forests Provide Natural Insurance? The
Microeconomics of Non-Timber Forest Product Collection in the Brazilian Amazon’, Land
Economics, 77(4), 595–612.
Pattanayak, S. K., S. Wunder, and P. J. Ferraro (2010), ‘Show Me the Money: Do Payments Supply
Environmental Services in Developing Countries?’, Review of Environmental Economics and
Policy, 4(2), 254–274.
Pechey, R., E. Cartwright, M. Pilling, G. J. Hollands, M. Vasiljevic, S. A. Jebb, and T. M. Marteau
(2019), ‘Impact of Increasing the Proportion of Healthier Foods Available on Energy Purchased
in Worksite Cafeterias: A Stepped Wedge Randomized Controlled Pilot Trial’, Appetite,
133, 286–296.
Pendrill, F., U. M. Persson, J. Godar, T. Kastner, D. Moran, S. Schmidt, and R. Wood (2019),
‘Agricultural and Forestry Trade Drives Large Share of Tropical Deforestation Emissions’, Global
Environmental Change, 56, 1–10.
Pepper, I. L., C. P. Gerba, D. T. Newby, and C. W. Rice (2009), ‘Soil: A Public Health Threat or
Savior?’, Critical Reviews in Environmental Science and Technology, 39(5), 416–432.
Perrings, C. (2014), Our Uncommon Heritage: Biodiversity Change, Ecosystem Services, and
Human Wellbeing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Phalan, B., R. E. Green, L. V. Dicks, G. Dotta, C. Feniuk, A. Lamb, B. B. N. Strassburg, D. R.
Williams, E. K. H. J. Z. Ermgassen, and A. Balmford (2016), ‘How Can Higher-yield Farming Help
to Spare Nature?’, Science, 351(6272), 450–451.
Pimm, S. L., C. N. Jenkins, R. Abell, T. M. Brooks, J. L. Gittleman, L. N. Joppa, P. H. Raven,
C. M. Roberts, and J. O. Sexton (2014), ‘The Biodiversity of Species and their Rates of Extinction,
Distribution, and Protection’, Science, 344(6187), 987-997.
Pimm, S. L, and P. H. Raven (2019), ‘The State of the World’s Biodiversity’, In Dasgupta P., Raven
P. H., and McIvor A., eds., Biological Extinction: New Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press).
References
96 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
Pimentel, D., and M. Burgess (2013), ‘Soil Erosion Threatens Food Production’, Agriculture,
3(3), 443–463.
Pinker, S. (2018), Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress
(London: Penguin).
Poore, J., and T. Nemecek (2018), ‘Reducing Food’s Environmental Impacts Through Producers
and Consumers’, Science, 360(6392), 987–992.
Portfolio Earth (2020), Bankrolling Extinction: The Banking Sector’s Role in the Global
Biodiversity Crisis.
Putnam, R. D. – with R. Leonardi, and R. Y. Nanetti – (1993), Making Democracy Work: Civic
Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
Pyle, R. M. (2003), ‘Nature Matrix: Reconnecting People and Nature’, Oryx, 37(2), 206–214.
Raven, P.H. (2020), ‘How the Living World Evolved and Where it’s Headed Now,’ Manuscript,
Missouri Botanical Garden, St Louis.
Rawls, J. (1972), A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
Reisch, L. A. and C. R. Sunstein (2016), ‘Do Europeans Like Nudges?’, Judgment and Decision
Making, 11(4), 310–325.
Ridley, M. (2010), The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (London: Fourth Estate).
Rizal, G., S. Karki, V. Thakur, J. Chatterjee, R. A. Coe, S. Wanchana, and W. P. Quick (2012),
‘Towards a C4 Rice’, Asian Journal of Cell Biology, 7(2), 13–31.
Rockström, J., W. Steffen, K. Noone, Å. Persson, F. S. Chapin III, E. F. Lambin, T. M. Lenton, M.
Scheffer, C. Folke, H. J. Schellnhuber, B. Nykvist, C. A. de Wit, T. Hughes, S. van der Leeuw, H.
Rodhe, S. Sörlin, P. K. Snyder, R. Costanza, U. Svedin, M. Falkenmark, L. Karlberg, R. W. Corell,
V. J. Fabry, J. Hansen, B. Walker, D. Liverman, K. Richardson, P. Crutzen, and J. A. Foley (2009),
‘A Safe Operating Space for Humanity’, Nature, 461(7263), 472-475.
Schama, S. (1995), Landscape and Memory (London: Harper Collins).
Sen, A. (1982), ‘Approaches to the Choice of Discount Rates for Social Cost Benefit Analysis’,
in R. Lind, ed., Discounting for Time and Risk in Energy Policy (Washington, DC: Resources for
the Future).
Smith, K. R., A. Woodward, B. Lemke, M. Otto, C. J. Chang, A. A. Mance, J. Balmes, and T.
Kjellstrom (2016), ‘The Last Summer Olympics? Climate Change, Health, and Work Outdoors,’
The Lancet, 388(10045), 642-644.
Solow, R. M. (2000), ‘Notes on Social Capital and Economic Performance’ in P. Dasgupta, and I.
Serageldin, eds., Social Capita: A Multifaceted Perspective, (Washington, DC: The World Bank).
Somanathan, E. (1991), ‘Deforestation, Property Rights and Incentives in Central Himalaya’,
Economic and Political Weekly, 26(4), 37–46.
Somanathan, E., R. Prabhakar, and B. S. Mehta (2005), ‘Does Decentralization Work? Forest
Conservation in the Himalayas’, Indian Statistical Institute Discussion Paper 05-04.
Somanathan, E., R. Prabhakar, and B. S. Mehta (2009). ‘Decentralization for cost-effective
conservation’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(11), 4143–4147.
Soury, A. (2007), Sacred Forests: A Sustainable Conservation Strategy? The Case of Sacred
Forests in The Ouémé Valley, Benin.
References
97The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
Steffen, W., K. Richardson, J. Rockström, S. E. Cornell, I. Fetzer, E. M. Bennett, R. Biggs,
S. R. Carpenter, W. de Vries, C. A. de Wit, C. Folke, D. Gerten, J. Heinke, G. M. Mace,
L. M. Persson, V. Ramanathan, B. Reyers, and S. Sörlin (2015), ‘Planetary Boundaries: Guiding
Human Development on a Changing Planet’, Science, 347(6223), 1259855.
Stern, N. (2006), The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press).
Stern, N. (2015), Why are we Waiting? The Logic, Urgency and Promise of Tackling Climate
Change (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
Stiglitz, J. E. (1989), ‘Markets, Market Failures and Development’, The American Economic
Review, 79(2), 197–203.
Thaler, R. H., and C. R. Sunstein (2008), Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and
Happiness (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press).
Thomson, J. T., D. Feeny, and R. J. Oakerson (1986), ‘Institutional Dynamics: The Evolution
and Dissolution of Common-Property Resource Management’ in National Research Council,
Proceedings of the Conference on Common Property Resource Management. (Washington, DC:
National Academy Press).
Tree, I. (2018), Wilding: The Return of Nature to an English Farm (London: Picador
– Pan Macmillan).
Trentmann, F., ed. (2012), The Oxford Handbook of the History of Consumption (Oxford: Oxford
University Press).
Trentmann, F. (2016), Empire of Things: How We Became a World of Consumers, from the
Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-First (London: Allen Lane).
UNDP (1990), Human Development Report 1990. Concept and Measurement of
Human Development.
UNEP (2020), Building Back Better: The Role of Green Fiscal Policies (Policy Brief).
UNEP, and PRI (2019), Fiduciary Duty in the 21st Century.
UNEP-WCMC, IUCN, and NGS (2018), Protected Planet Report 2018.
UNEP and WTO (2018), Making Trade Work for the Environment, Prosperity and Resilience.
UNFPA (1995), ‘Program of Action of the 1994 International Conference on Population and
Development (Chapters I-VIII)’, Population and Development Review, 21(1), 187–213.
United Nations (2015), The Sustainable Development Goals.
UNPD (2019), World Population Prospects 2019 – Data booklet (New York, NY: United Nations).
UNPD (2020), Estimates and Projections of Family Planning Indicators 2020 (New York, NY:
United Nations).
UNU-IHDP and UNEP (2012), Inclusive Wealth Report 2012: Measuring Progress Toward
Sustainability (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
UNU-IHDP and UNEP (2014), Inclusive Wealth Report 2014. Measuring Progress Towards
Sustainability (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Veblen, T. (1899), The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (New York,
NY: Macmillan) 1925 Edition.
References
98 The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
Vincent, J. R. (2011), ‘Valuing the Environment as a Production Input’, in A. K. E. Haque,
M. N. Murty, and P. Shyamsundar, eds., Environmental Valuation in South Asia (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press).
Vincent, J. R., R. T. Carson, J. R. DeShazo, K. A. Schwabe, I. Ahmad, S. K. Chong, Y. T. Chang,
and M. D. Potts (2014), ‘Tropical Countries May Be Willing to Pay More to Protect Their Forests’,
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(28), 10113–10118.
Vollset, S. E., E. Goren, C.-W. Yuan, J. Cao, A. E. Smith, T. Hsiao, C. Bisignano, G. S. Azhar,
E. Castro, J. Chalek, A. J. Dolgert, T. Frank, K. Fukutaki, S. I. Hay, R. Lozano, A. H. Mokdad,
V. Nandakumar, M. Pierce, M. Pletcher, T. Robalik, K. M. Steuben, H. Y. Wunrow, B. S. Zlavog,
C. J. L. Murray (2020), ‘Fertility, Mortality, Migration, and Population Scenarios for 195 Countries
and Territories from 2017 to 2100: A Forecasting Analysis for the Global Burden of Disease
Study’, The Lancet, 396(10258), 1285–1306.
Voosen, P. (2016), ‘Anthropocene Pinned to Postwar Period’, Science, 353(6302), 852–853.
Wackernagel, M., and B. Beyers (2019), Ecological Footprint: Managing Our Biocapacity Budget
(Gabriola Island: New Society).
Wade, R. (1988), Village Republics: Economic Conditions for Collective Action in South India
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Wagg, C., S. F. Bender, F. Widmer, and M. G. A. Van Der Heijden (2014), ‘Soil Biodiversity and
Soil Community Composition Determine Ecosystem Multifunctionality’, Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences, 111(14), 5266–5270.
Waldron, A., V. M. Adams, J. R. Allan, A. Arnell, G. P. Asner, S. Atkinson, A. Baccini, J. E. M.
Baillie, A. Balmford, J. Austin Beau, L. Brander, E. Brondizio, A. Bruner, N. D. Burgess, K. Burkart,
S. Butchart, R. Button, R. Carrasco, W. Cheung, V. Christensen, A. Clements, M. Coll, M. di
Marco, M. Deguignet, E. Dinerstein, E. Ellis, F. Eppink, J. Ervin, A. Escobedo, J. Fa, A. Fernandes-
Llamazares, S. Fernando, S. Fujimori, B. Fulton, S. Garnett, J. Gerber, D. Gill, T. Gopalakrishna, N.
Hahn, B. Halpern, T. Hasegawa, P. Havlik, V. Heikinheimo, R. Heneghan, E. Henry, F. Humpenoder,
H. Jonas, K. Jones, L. Joppa, A. R. Joshi, M Jung, N. Kingston, C. Klein, T. Krisztin, V. Lam,
D. Leclere, P. Lindsey, H. Locke, T. E. Lovejoy, P. Madgwick, Y. Malhi, P. Malmer, M. Maron, J.
Mayorga, H. van Meijl, D. Miller, Z. Molnar, N. Mueller, N. Mukherjee, R. Naidoo, K. Nakamura, P.
Nepal, R. Noss, B. O’Leary, D. Olson, J. Palc ios Abrantes, M. Paxton, A. Popp, H. Possingham, J.
Prestemon, A. Reside, C. Robinson, J. Robinson, E. Sala, K. Scherrer, M. Spalding, A. Spenceley, J.
Steenbeck, E. Stehfest, B. Strassborg, R. Sumaila, K. Swinnerton, J. Sze, D. Tittensor, T. Toivonen,
A. Toledo, P. N. Torres, W. -J. Van Zeist, J. Vause, O. Venter, T. Vilela, P. Visconti, C. Vynne, R.
Watson, J. Watson, E. Wikramanayake, B. Williams, B. Wintle, S. Woodley, W. Wu, K. Zander,
Y. Zhang, and Y. P. Zhang (2020), Protecting 30% of the Planet for Nature: Costs, Benefits and
Economic Implications.
Waters, C. N., W. Steffen, J. Zalasiewicz, J. Zalasiewicz, C. Summerhayes, C. Summerhayes,
A. D. Barnosky, A. D. Barnosky, C. Poirier, C. Poirier, A. Ga, A. Ga uszka, A. Cearreta, A. Cearreta,
M. Edgeworth, E. C. Ellis, C. Jeandel, R. Leinfelder, J.R. McNeill, W. Steffen, J. Syritski, D. Vidas,
M. Wagreich, M. Williams, A. Zhisheng, J. Grineveld, E. Odada, N. Oreskes, and A. P. Wolfe
(2016), ‘The Anthropocene is Functionally and Stratigraphically Distinct from the Holocene’,
Science, 351(6269), aad2622-(1-10).
White, M. P., I. Alcock, B. W. Wheeler, and M. H. Depledge (2013), ‘Would You Be Happier
Living in a Greener Urban Area? A Fixed-Effects Analysis of Panel Data’, Psychological Science,
24(6). 920–928.
References
99The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – Abridged Version
White, M. P., L. R. Elliott, T. Taylor, B.W. Wheeler, A. Spencer, A. Bone, M. H. Depledge and
L. E. Fleming (2016), ‘Recreational Physical Activity in Natural Environments and Implications for
Health: A Population based Cross-Sectional Study in England’, Preventive Medicine,
91, 383–388.
World Bank (2019), World Development Indicators.
World Bank (2020a), World Development Indicators.
World Bank (2020b), ‘Global Action Urgently Needed to Halt Historic Threats to Poverty
Reduction’, ‘https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2020/10/07/global-action-urgently-
needed-to-halt-historic-threats-to-poverty-reduction’.
WRAP (2020), Courtauld Commitment 2025 Milestone Progress Report.
WWF (2013), Searching for Sustainability: Comparative Analysis of Certification Schemes for
Biomass Used for the Production of Biofuels.
WWF, and Investec (2019), Sustainability and Satellites: New Frontiers in Sovereign
Debt Investing.
WWF, and Swiss Re Institute (2020), Conserving our Common Heritage: The Role of Spatial
Finance in Natural World Heritage Protection.
York University Ecological Footprint Initiative and Global Footprint Network (2020). ‘National
Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts, 2021 Edition’, ‘https://data.footprintnetwork.org’.
Zilberman, D., T. G. Holland, and I. Trilnick (2018), ‘Agricultural GMOs-What We know and
Where Scientists Disagree’, Sustainability, 10(5), 1514.
Zilberman, D., L. Lipper, and N. McCarthy (2008), ‘When Could Payments for Environmental
Services Benefit the Poor?’, Environment and Development Economics, 13(3), 255–278.
HM Treasury contacts
This document can be downloaded from
www.gov.uk
If you require this information in an alternative
format or have general enquiries about
HM Treasury and its work, contact:
Correspondence Team
HM Treasury
1 Horse Guards Road
London
SW1A 2HQ
Tel: 020 7270 5000
Email: public.enquiries@hmtreasury.gov.uk
CCS1120604514
978-1-911680-30-7
