VoxTalks Economics S8 Ep56: The economics of biodiversity
Nov 5, 2025
Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta, a renowned economist from the University of Cambridge, discusses his groundbreaking work on biodiversity and natural capital. He shares insights on how humanity is embedded in nature, challenging the notion of separation. Dasgupta highlights the need for economic indicators that value nature and warns about the decline of natural assets. He also tackles complex issues like deforestation, trade-offs in agriculture, and the urgency of addressing biodiversity loss, emphasizing the risks of inaction and the importance of wealth transfers between nations.
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Economics Needs A Grammar For Nature
- Partha Dasgupta created an economic "grammar" to bring nature into mainstream economic discourse.
- He spent decades learning ecology to integrate natural capital into economic thinking.
Relative Prices, Not Market Worship
- Valuing nature uses a unit of account to express relative scarcity, not to fetishize markets.
- Dasgupta argues markets currently underprice nature, causing overuse.
The Hockey Stick Of Natural Decline
- Global produced and human capital rose while natural capital declined over decades.
- Post‑1950 economic expansion drove unprecedented global pressure on nature.