Why the global economic system should value life on our planet, not exploit it
Article meta
Article Date: 24 November 2025
Article URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03858-z
Article Image: https://media.nature.com/w767/magazine-assets/d41586-025-03858-z/d41586-025-03858-z_51731502.jpg
Summary
Partha Dasgupta’s book, reviewed by Jacob Hochard in Nature, argues that conventional economic accounting systematically ignores the value of living systems. Over the past 75 years economic growth has improved many human indicators, but it has often relied on depleting natural assets — forests, wetlands, soils and fisheries — creating an ecological debt that GDP and similar metrics fail to record.
Dasgupta outlines how Earth’s life-support systems deliver essential services (climate regulation, soil renewal, water filtration and biodiversity) and shows that humanity’s demand now exceeds the planet’s regenerative capacity by roughly 70%. He calls for recognising nature as capital: measuring stocks, tracking depreciation and counting the ‘interest’ ecosystems provide.
The review notes growing policy and market responses — natural-capital accounting pilots in countries such as the Netherlands, Canada and Colombia, and corporate frameworks like the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures — but also flags major challenges in valuation, governance and integrating ecology into macroeconomic indicators.
Key Points
- Dasgupta frames ecosystems (forests, wetlands, soils, wildlife) as assets whose depletion undermines measured prosperity.
- Humanity’s collective demand on nature exceeds regenerative capacity by about 70%, meaning we are drawing down natural capital rather than living off its interest.
- One-third of remaining wetlands were lost between 1970 and 2015, weakening flood protection, nutrient cycling and carbon storage.
- Conventional economic models historically omitted nature because resources seemed abundant; that simplification is now dangerously outdated.
- Natural-capital accounting trials in several countries and corporate disclosure initiatives (e.g. TNFD-style frameworks) are beginning to give ecosystems an economic voice.
- Main barriers remain: reliably valuing ecosystem services, determining governance and ownership of natural assets, and integrating these measures into national accounts like GDP.
- Dasgupta emphasises the tension between short-term extraction (which can inflate GDP) and long-term stewardship (which sustains future yields and resilience).
Context and relevance
This review situates Dasgupta’s arguments within a rapidly expanding policy movement to account for nature in economics. For anyone tracking climate, biodiversity loss, resource policy or sustainable finance, the piece explains why treating ecosystems as disposable inputs is both scientifically wrong and economically risky. It connects scientific evidence (wetland loss, deforestation impacts on rainfall and productivity) to practical shifts in accounting and corporate reporting that could reshape investment, planning and national policy.
Author style
Punchy — the reviewer keeps the focus tight and persuasive. If you care about how economic signals steer land use, investment and regulation, this review amplifies why the detailed arguments matter: they point to concrete policy and market shifts that could halt short-term profit-driven depletion of natural capital.
Why should I read this?
Because it’s a clear, no-nonsense wake-up call: GDP can look rosy while the natural stuff that actually keeps economies running gets trashed. Read this to get the argument in plain terms, see where policy is already moving, and understand what needs fixing if we want future prosperity that doesn’t bankrupt the biosphere.