On his book Endangered Economies: How the Neglect of Nature Threatens Our Prosperity
Cover Interview of May 03, 2017
A close-up
The natural world contributes in crucial ways to our
physical wellbeing. There are also spiritual and esthetic dimensions to what it
brings, and it is these that have traditionally motivated people to argue for
conservation. Nature’s economic contributions are not taken into account. I
look at how these can be measured and what the results are.
To give a sense of where this takes us, the world’s
populations of pollinating insects represent an asset that is worth at least
$14 trillion. Without them, up to a third of our food crops would be lost. And
the world’s forests are worth well over $10 trillion just for their
contribution to stabilizing the climate by photosynthesis, taking carbon
dioxide out of the air and replacing it with oxygen. I calculate these values
by estimating the value of the services the assets provide each year, and then
capitalizing this over their lifetimes – the standard way of valuing any
capital asset.
Biodiversity is another asset that is undoubtedly of great
value, but we understand so little of why it matters to us that we can only
value a few of the many aspects of its contributions to human societies. I
identify several contributions. One is the development of medicines through
bioprospecting. Another is the insurance role played by crop varieties that are
not currently used commercially and can be used to replace current commercial
varieties, if these fall to the assaults of pests. Yet another contribution is
that biodiversity has allowed the development of all of our important foods
crops and animals from their wild originals. And, of course, the popularity of
nature programs shows that we have an intrinsic attraction and attachment to
biodiversity.
[M]odern art still commonly refers to a rather narrow range of meaning and scope. It basically focuses on developments in Paris (Impressionism etc.) in the nineteenth century, and to selected Euro-American movements in the twentieth century (Cubism, Abstract Expressionism etc). But if we understand modernity as a socially transformative condition that was in force across much of the world from the nineteenth century on, how are we to understand artistic practices that were associated with these momentous changes?Iftikhar Dadi, Interview of March 26, 2012
The two world wars of the twentieth century were a product of the dislocations brought about of modernization in an environment where great power competition and the drive for hegemony were conducted primarily by violent means. Now that this era has passed in Europe and is receding in much of the Pacific rim, and hegemony achieved by force is no longer considered a legitimate ambition, the security requirements and fears of great powers should decline.Richard Ned Lebow, Interview of October 4, 2010
A close-up
The natural world contributes in crucial ways to our physical wellbeing. There are also spiritual and esthetic dimensions to what it brings, and it is these that have traditionally motivated people to argue for conservation. Nature’s economic contributions are not taken into account. I look at how these can be measured and what the results are.
To give a sense of where this takes us, the world’s populations of pollinating insects represent an asset that is worth at least $14 trillion. Without them, up to a third of our food crops would be lost. And the world’s forests are worth well over $10 trillion just for their contribution to stabilizing the climate by photosynthesis, taking carbon dioxide out of the air and replacing it with oxygen. I calculate these values by estimating the value of the services the assets provide each year, and then capitalizing this over their lifetimes – the standard way of valuing any capital asset.
Biodiversity is another asset that is undoubtedly of great value, but we understand so little of why it matters to us that we can only value a few of the many aspects of its contributions to human societies. I identify several contributions. One is the development of medicines through bioprospecting. Another is the insurance role played by crop varieties that are not currently used commercially and can be used to replace current commercial varieties, if these fall to the assaults of pests. Yet another contribution is that biodiversity has allowed the development of all of our important foods crops and animals from their wild originals. And, of course, the popularity of nature programs shows that we have an intrinsic attraction and attachment to biodiversity.