Margins
On Natural Capital book cover
On Natural Capital
The Value of the World Around Us
2025
First Published
288
Number of Pages

'the most important person you've never heard of' - The New York Times 'Partha Dasgupta provides the compass we urgently need… by bringing economics and ecology together, we can help save the natural world at what may be the last minute – and in doing so, save ourselves.’ - David Attenborough 'This is the best book in economics for a general reader since Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations.' - Paul R Ehrlich ‘Imagine a football team which measures its success only on the basis of the goals it scores and doesn’t count the goals it concedes. That football team could be losing right through without recognizing it…’ For as long as they have existed, our economic models have served us an incomplete picture. The models and metrics tells us that our economies are healthy because they are growing. However, this doesn't account for the fact that our growth is driven by a resource that we take for free and treat as nature. For centuries we have been using it as if it were both, but we know now, more than ever, that our demand on the natural world is unsustainable. It's no longer sufficient to only see part of the picture; it's time that our economic models show us the whole thing. In On Natural Capital, renowned Cambridge economist Sir Partha Dasgupta lays out a seminal and groundbreaking new approach to economics. Challenging everything that has come before, he asks, what if we were to put a value on nature just as we value everything else? An urgent call to transform the focus and structures of global economics, On Natural Capital is a bold and groundbreaking book that could, truly, change everything.

Author

Partha Dasgupta
Partha Dasgupta
Author · 3 books

Professor Sir Partha Sarathi Dasgupta (born November 17, 1942), FBA, FRS, is the Frank Ramsey Professor of Economics at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom; Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge; Honorary Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge; and Professor of Environmental and Development Economics at the University of Manchester. Research interests have covered welfare and development economics; the economics of technological change; population, environmental, and resource economics; social capital; the theory of games; and the economics of malnutrition. He was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, then in India, and is the son of noted economist A.K. Dasgupta. He is married to Carol Dasgupta, who is a psychotherapist. They have three children, Zubeida Dasgupta-Clark (an educational psychologist), Shamik (a philosophy professor) and Aisha (who works on reproductive health in poor countries).

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