Nature’s Capital - The Key To Poverty Eradication
Added to website: 24 October 2005
Speaking in Cambridge and paraphrasing the eighteenth century economist Adam Smith, Dr Klaus Topfler, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said that “we must recalculate the wealth of nations”.
Development “requires three types of capital: financial; human and ‘nature’ capital”.
Conservation has an economic value. For example tropical forests act as carbon sinks. They are needed to mop up carbon dioxide produced from the burning of fossil fuels. Countries in the tropics cannot be expected to conserve forests and forego the income from timber felling merely to satisfy the developed world. Governments conserving their forests should be rewarded for their efforts. Conservation is a worthy aim in itself but it doen’t feed people that are hungry.
Economists must find ways of quantifying the value of nature and schemes must be put in place to reward investment in conservation. Forests can be worth $250 per ha in terms of carbon fixation and water conservation. With quantification, better decisions can be made. As an example, in a specific situation “it might better in economic terms to plant mangroves rather than build a new dam”.
Dr Topfler’s address on 20 October was delivered to a packed audience at New Hall College, Cambridge. It is one in a series jointly organised by UNEP-WCMC and collaborating organisations in Cambridge.
Details of future lectures are available on the UNEP-WCMC website.
