Book Excerpt: The intrinsic and economic case for nature

It would be a tragedy if communities in India and Indonesia were forced to follow the same path as the West, belatedly atoning for their sins decades hence when tigers and Komodo dragons are but distant memories. Photo: iStock

The declarative nature of this book’s title belies a certain complexity, for there are ultimately several sorts of cases for nature. Scholars far more qualified than I have explored the economic arguments for preserving nature and the notion of ‘natural capital’ for decades; activists and artists have made intrinsic cases for nature for centuries; spiritual traditions have arguably appealed to higher ideals in relation to nature for millennia. But each of these cases have, for too long, been viewed as separate — even as somehow in conflict with each other — when in fact they all form part of a powerful, indivisible case for nature.

Since I began researching this book in 2020, my own thinking has certainly evolved. I started with the assumption that the intrinsic arguments had been made well enough. I judged that they had reached a wide and increasingly receptive audience — a reflection, perhaps, of the environmentally conscious bubble I live and work in. Through hundreds of conversations, including with people who disagreed with me, I changed my mind: I came to view both motivations — economic and intrinsic — as deserving of far more attention.

To lay my own cards on the table: the intrinsic case on its own has always been more than powerful enough for me. I was raised by a family of conservationists in India, steeped in a culture that valued nature and the minimisation of ecological suffering, for its own sake. My grandmother and father spent years volunteering at the Blue Cross, nursing injured animals back to health; my mother later found her own way into conservation through her passion for wildlife photography. In researching this book, I was frequently reminded of the profoundly important and complementary need to cultivate love and respect for nature, and perhaps even a spiritual relationship to the natural world. Others have made that case persuasively through their writing, filmmaking and scholarship.

Having said all that, much of what follows nevertheless focuses on the economic case for nature.

For one, it is by far the less well-understood set of arguments, even in the green-tinged circles that I and perhaps you inhabit. Even as researchers and practitioners have plugged away at understanding the value of nature to human wellbeing for decades, the ideas underlying natural capital have only occasionally made the leap from academia and the NGO world to common parlance. Where they are discussed, as in the recent surge of interest in natural climate solutions, nature’s utility is often viewed narrowly (say, in the planting of trees to draw down our carbon pollution). In pulling together a range of business cases, and describing them in accessible, jargon-light terms, I hope to bring the concept of natural capital to life as an integrated whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

I also feel a sense of urgency that I cannot shake. The industrialised world, having pillaged for several centuries, now offers up to present and future generations a dangerously denuded set of landscapes and seascapes. But the task is even more urgent in the developing world: in countries like India and Indonesia, with growing populations that rightfully harbour  economic aspirations. It’s all very well to ask wealthy urban consumers to pay a premium for nature-friendly products. It’s another thing entirely to expect the communities that live in, and typically steward, natural landscapes to give up their extractive routes to prosperity without enabling better ones in their place. What a tragedy it would be if they were forced to follow the same path as the West, belatedly atoning for their sins decades hence when tigers and Komodo dragons are but distant memories. If falling crop yields, historic floods and ever-more-frequent wildfires are warning signs these countries cannot choose to ignore, then models for restoration that also happen to make economic sense deserve attention, right now.