The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review
Author: Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta Category: Report Publisher: HM Treasury : 2021The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review, presents the first comprehensive economic framework of its kind for biodiversity. And the most prestigious one.
In a quite revolutionary way, Dasgupta asserts that “the contemporary practice of using Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to judge economic performance is based on a faulty application of economics” and suggests that “GDP growth is, in principle, compatible with sustainable development”. What is incompatible is the exclusion of such an important factor as biodiversity.
Back in 2019, the UK Government commissioned Dasgupta to lead an independent, global review on the economics of biodiversity. The study was officially launched in February 2020 at an event hosted by the Royal Society and was presented by Partha Dasgupta (author), the Prince of Wales, UK’s prime minister Boris Johnson and David Attenborough.
As reflected in the Review, nature is the foundation of our economy, health and wellbeing, and yet is often valued as zero and therefore invisible in decision making. “We are all asset managers. Whether as farmers or fishermen, hunters or gatherers, foresters or miners, households or companies, governments or communities, we manage the assets we have access to in line with our motivations, as best as we can. This Review pays close attention to a class of assets we call Nature and studies it in relation to the many other assets in our portfolios.”
The review calls for a radical change of perspective, in which every resource has its right place and the care it deserves. It highlights what our current system fails to value and how we cannot start to reverse biodiversity’s long-term decline until it is acknowledged within that system.
Dasgupta argues in his review, we need to start acting now: “Biodiversity loss will, in turn, have huge implications for climate change: enormous amounts of carbon are locked within animal life and vegetation”.
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