This coming Thursday 6 May 2021, Sir Partha Dasgupta is live in conversation with Cameron Hepburn in a talk entitled “The Economics of Biodiversity Review.” Register HERE. The talk will also be streamed via YouTube. This is a follow up to the publication, by the Government on 2nd Feb 2021 of the Final Report of the Independent Review on the Economics of Biodiversity led by Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta.
The Dasgupta Review on the Economics of Biodiversity was published earlier this year. According to Cecilia Keating, Senior Reporter of Business Green, its message is stark: The world needs to fundamentally overhaul how society measures economic success if it is to stem the rapid decline of biodiversity that threatens civilization itself. The central conclusion — that our demands on nature far exceed its capacity to supply them, putting biodiversity under huge pressure and society at “extreme risk” — may not be a new observation, but it is rare to see it presented quite so clearly in a government-commissioned report. Sir David Attenborough wrote in the foreword of the Review:
“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.”
The review identifies that our relationship with nature is economically unsustainable, as we are depleting the natural environment faster than it can regenerate. This undermines nature’s productivity, resilience and adaptability – fuelling extreme risk and uncertainty for economies and wellbeing.