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Economic factors underlying biodiversity loss

Contemporary economic thinking does not acknowledge that the human economy is embedded in Nature; it instead treats humanity as a customer that draws on Nature. In this paper, we present a grammar for economic reasoning that is not built on that error. The grammar is based on a comparison between ou...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Dasgupta, Partha, Levin, Simon
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Royal Society 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10225854/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37246373
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2022.0197
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author Dasgupta, Partha
Levin, Simon
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Levin, Simon
author_sort Dasgupta, Partha
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description Contemporary economic thinking does not acknowledge that the human economy is embedded in Nature; it instead treats humanity as a customer that draws on Nature. In this paper, we present a grammar for economic reasoning that is not built on that error. The grammar is based on a comparison between our demand for Nature's maintenance and regulating services and her ability to supply them on a sustainable basis. The comparison is then used to show that for measuring economic well-being, national statistical offices should estimate an inclusive measure of their economies' wealth and its distribution, not GDP and its distribution. The concept of ‘inclusive wealth’ is then used to identify policy instruments that ought to be used to manage such global public goods as the open seas and tropical rainforests. Trade liberalization without heed paid to the fate of local ecosystems from which primary products are drawn and exported by developing countries leads to a transfer of inclusive wealth from there to rich importing countries. Humanity's embeddedness in Nature has far-reaching implications for the way we should view human activities—in households, communities, nations and the world. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Detecting and attributing the causes of biodiversity change: needs, gaps and solutions’.
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spelling pubmed-102258542023-05-30 Economic factors underlying biodiversity loss Dasgupta, Partha Levin, Simon Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci Articles Contemporary economic thinking does not acknowledge that the human economy is embedded in Nature; it instead treats humanity as a customer that draws on Nature. In this paper, we present a grammar for economic reasoning that is not built on that error. The grammar is based on a comparison between our demand for Nature's maintenance and regulating services and her ability to supply them on a sustainable basis. The comparison is then used to show that for measuring economic well-being, national statistical offices should estimate an inclusive measure of their economies' wealth and its distribution, not GDP and its distribution. The concept of ‘inclusive wealth’ is then used to identify policy instruments that ought to be used to manage such global public goods as the open seas and tropical rainforests. Trade liberalization without heed paid to the fate of local ecosystems from which primary products are drawn and exported by developing countries leads to a transfer of inclusive wealth from there to rich importing countries. Humanity's embeddedness in Nature has far-reaching implications for the way we should view human activities—in households, communities, nations and the world. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Detecting and attributing the causes of biodiversity change: needs, gaps and solutions’. The Royal Society 2023-07-17 2023-05-29 /pmc/articles/PMC10225854/ /pubmed/37246373 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2022.0197 Text en © 2023 The Authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Articles
Dasgupta, Partha
Levin, Simon
Economic factors underlying biodiversity loss
title Economic factors underlying biodiversity loss
title_full Economic factors underlying biodiversity loss
title_fullStr Economic factors underlying biodiversity loss
title_full_unstemmed Economic factors underlying biodiversity loss
title_short Economic factors underlying biodiversity loss
title_sort economic factors underlying biodiversity loss
topic Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10225854/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37246373
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2022.0197
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