The SG of HCENR endorses the Dasgupta Review report on the Economics of biodiversity
The Dasgupta Review advances our understanding of what makes it hard to incorporate the value of biodiversity in evaluating public policy choices. Readers are well educated about how measures of value are challenged by the three key attributes of “mobility, invisibility and silence” that distinguish this living component of natural wealth from more tangible assets. The Review then establishes the link between the hidden, silent, and mobile features of the services of biodiversity and the environmental externalities that cause outcomes of private decisions to diverge from social optima. The important role of biodiversity in the regulation and maintenance of the dynamic interactions between functional natural ecosystems, social institutions, and human capital, to obtain the desired balance between our demand for and supply of necessary for life services of nature becomes powerfully evident. Absolutely required reading for researchers, policy makers, managers, and students of sustainability science and practice.’