On natural capital The value of the world around us

What would it mean if people placed an economic value on nature in the same way they assess other resources, goods, and services, asks Cambridge University economist Dasgupta (The Economics of Biodiversity) in this bold treatise. Unlike produced capital (tangible assets like roads and buildings) and human capital (intangible assets like education and aptitude), natural capital (living organisms but also nonliving resources like water and forests) has historically been left out of economic considerations and treated as free and infinite. The result, Dasgupta writes, is an impoverished biosphere, marked by species extinction (currently at 100--1,000 times "the average extinction rates in the previous several million years") and depleted ecosystems that can't sustainably meet demands for their resources. Dasgupta also persuasively shows that the export of natural products from poor countries to wealthier ones, rather than having a positive impact on the former, actually consists of significant wealth transfers from exporting to importing countries. His comprehensive analysis of basic ecology and economics are lucid and accessible, but his conclusion that people need to care about their local communities and preserve biodiversity where they can feels insufficient in the face of the global challenges he identifies. Still, this is an urgent call to transform humanity's relationship to nature. (Jan.)

An argument for considering the impact of industry on nature when evaluating the global economy. In a condensation aimed at the general reader of a much longer and more technical report on the economic impact of biodiversity, British economist Dasgupta makes the case that economists in general have been ignoring what he calls "natural capital" in favor of the more historically accepted measures of produced capital and human capital. By "natural capital," Dasgupta means "ecosystems and their constituents," and he points out that investment in natural capital is very different from what we usually mean by investment: It often means allowing ecosystems to rest and regenerate; and not allowing this to take place necessarily results in an ongoing degradation of natural capital. Over the course of the book, the author concisely considers the economic impact of species extinction, the difficulty of dealing with exploitation of the ocean, and the importance of acting locally. While those who aren't fluent in the language and mathematics of economics may find some of the volume hard going, with its graphs and formulas and its prose dry, the author does come down to earth with concrete examples, such as considering the impact of mangrove forests or measuring the effects of a shrimp farming operation. Though Dasgupta does present a few tentative solutions to the problem of the increasing loss and degradation of natural capital--lowering future global human population and per capita GDP, reducing the production of goods, and raising the rate of regeneration of the biosphere--his primary emphasis is on laying out a pressing problem in terms that can't be brushed off, noting bluntly and undramatically that "we need 1.7 Earths to meet humanity's current demand on a sustainable basis." A chilling warning couched in implacably measured terms. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.