1 00:00:00,150 --> 00:00:08,520 To the first of this new Oxford Martin School series of events on the Dasgupta Review on the economics of Biodiversity. 2 00:00:08,520 --> 00:00:14,820 My name is Katherine Hepburn. I'm professor of Environmental Economics and director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment. 3 00:00:14,820 --> 00:00:22,020 And to kick off this event series, we have none other than Professor Partha himself, the author. 4 00:00:22,020 --> 00:00:25,380 Or perhaps I should say lead author. It was a team effort. 5 00:00:25,380 --> 00:00:35,220 I'm sure he's the first to say, but, but certainly the lead intellect and the brains and the engine behind what is what is a meaty 604 page review. 6 00:00:35,220 --> 00:00:36,870 So welcome. 7 00:00:36,870 --> 00:00:47,100 It's a particular pleasure for us to have you with us here in Oxford Digitally Pathways, reminding me that it is almost two years to the day. 8 00:00:47,100 --> 00:00:57,630 It was the 16th of May 2019, when we invited to come to Oxford to set up these initial thinking on what such a review could contain. 9 00:00:57,630 --> 00:01:04,830 And of course, when you're thinking about your research agenda, it evolves and changes and grows, 10 00:01:04,830 --> 00:01:13,440 and we were just reminiscing or at least reflecting on the fact that actually what has emerged is, 11 00:01:13,440 --> 00:01:16,860 well, really a hugely substantial body of work, 12 00:01:16,860 --> 00:01:23,970 a rethinking in some ways of economics with an awful lot of valuable textbook material in here to so students out there. 13 00:01:23,970 --> 00:01:30,720 You might want to read the review very closely. Now, for many of you, so palpable need no introduction. 14 00:01:30,720 --> 00:01:32,530 And he holds a kind of guru like status. 15 00:01:32,530 --> 00:01:39,660 So you won't mind me saying within economics, there will be people here who read an awful lot of what you've written, 16 00:01:39,660 --> 00:01:45,930 but there will be people who don't have a comment. Dog-eared copy of dust sculpture with sticky yellow notes all over it. 17 00:01:45,930 --> 00:01:53,490 So let me just do a quick introduction, said Arthur was appointed professor of economics at the University of Cambridge in 1985, 18 00:01:53,490 --> 00:02:03,810 served as chairman of the faculty from '97 to 2001, and he's won awards and prises too numerous to list, including, of course, his knighthood. 19 00:02:03,810 --> 00:02:07,080 Research wise, perhaps more importantly than the prises in the accolades, 20 00:02:07,080 --> 00:02:16,590 the intellectual contribution has been vast part of his PhD thesis, and sixty eight was centred on economic growth and population. 21 00:02:16,590 --> 00:02:22,510 And in a way, the nice thing about this body of work is that it comes back around to those big questions, actually. 22 00:02:22,510 --> 00:02:32,190 And if you're obsessing about how many children to have or if you're still wondering whether having three was OK by the planet, in my case, 23 00:02:32,190 --> 00:02:37,080 reading partner is perhaps not likely to resolve all of your inner demons, 24 00:02:37,080 --> 00:02:43,020 but it'll make you realise there are more ethical and social dimensions to the question that we previously thought. 25 00:02:43,020 --> 00:02:50,730 His work has covered welfare, development, economics, technological change and, of course, environmental and resource economics. 26 00:02:50,730 --> 00:02:54,150 And I might, in passing note, work on the theory of games as well. 27 00:02:54,150 --> 00:03:04,290 I've taught some of his work on the condo, say Paradox used a nicely apply, lightly applied to Brexit actually in recent years. 28 00:03:04,290 --> 00:03:11,310 So we're delighted to have you here. It's a great distinction and in fact of all of your distinctions, 29 00:03:11,310 --> 00:03:19,830 I'm going to finish by saying perhaps your your most significant distinction is that you had the excellent taste to marry a psychotherapist. 30 00:03:19,830 --> 00:03:26,200 As I have to. So we're going to get onto this is not a big formal lecture. 31 00:03:26,200 --> 00:03:29,940 Father insisted that that you didn't want to listen to him drone on. 32 00:03:29,940 --> 00:03:36,500 I think we might have disagreed on that point, but we're going to make it very engaged. 33 00:03:36,500 --> 00:03:40,470 And so there's a Q and a box on the bottom of your screen. 34 00:03:40,470 --> 00:03:45,340 So do type in questions as they appear to you. 35 00:03:45,340 --> 00:03:49,950 But what I wanted to start was just to say, Well, sit out what I thought. 36 00:03:49,950 --> 00:03:59,250 In some ways, the most important messages of the review have been and and check in with support himself and see what he thinks. 37 00:03:59,250 --> 00:04:05,760 So if I were to highlight six messages, the first is and these are really significant. 38 00:04:05,760 --> 00:04:15,900 We are in an extinction event currently. It may not feel that way in the human lifespan, but when you look at the data on a geological timescale, 39 00:04:15,900 --> 00:04:20,160 we are currently in an extinction event and we need to kind of wake up to that. 40 00:04:20,160 --> 00:04:26,790 Secondly, it's because our demands on nature far exceed the supply of nature. 41 00:04:26,790 --> 00:04:34,380 Speaking as economists and so our demand needs to fall or and or supply needs to increase. 42 00:04:34,380 --> 00:04:40,110 Thirdly, the key failure the failure to understand is the failure to do something about it. 43 00:04:40,110 --> 00:04:49,200 A key failure here is institutional and doing more of the same sort of things in the hope that we're going to solve this problem. 44 00:04:49,200 --> 00:04:54,210 A series of related environmental biodiversity related problems actually won't work. 45 00:04:54,210 --> 00:04:58,350 We need some quite radical interventions at this stage. 46 00:04:58,350 --> 00:05:06,160 Fourthly. A key plank is that we need to start getting prices into into nature. 47 00:05:06,160 --> 00:05:16,390 We need to value nature properly. Now this is a hotly contested, highly emotive and debated area on ethical grounds, on pragmatic grounds. 48 00:05:16,390 --> 00:05:21,670 I'm sure there will be questions about it and we'll discuss it together over the course of the next hour. 49 00:05:21,670 --> 00:05:29,020 And then lastly, I'm going to say that one of the things I took away from the view is that the the prices 50 00:05:29,020 --> 00:05:33,340 that we would hope to guess that are politically feasible probably won't be enough. 51 00:05:33,340 --> 00:05:39,640 And indeed, there are other externalities here other problems, market failures that need to be addressed and what we're going to need to do, 52 00:05:39,640 --> 00:05:46,210 and there's no one better than profit to actually think this through is to recognise the social nature of our preferences 53 00:05:46,210 --> 00:05:55,480 and understand how those preferences can be shifted towards more environmentally friendly kinds of preference or goals. 54 00:05:55,480 --> 00:06:01,690 And we also need to rethink our technological and innovation systems so that we get more nature friendly innovation. 55 00:06:01,690 --> 00:06:09,040 So it's not just pricing its preferences as well and innovation recognising, of course, that all three of those are connected. 56 00:06:09,040 --> 00:06:14,680 So I think that's enough for me. That's what I took away in terms of the high level key messages. 57 00:06:14,680 --> 00:06:19,120 Do you think that's a fair summary? Yeah, I think that's a fair summary. 58 00:06:19,120 --> 00:06:28,310 That's a very good one. More than fair. And which of them do you think in terms of if you had a magic wand and you could wave it and just say, 59 00:06:28,310 --> 00:06:34,460 I want these few things to change because if it is a fair summary, wearing an extinction event, what we've done isn't enough. 60 00:06:34,460 --> 00:06:44,490 What has to happen from here? Well, I think just a multiplicity of things and they have to be rooted from very local. 61 00:06:44,490 --> 00:06:50,880 Items, individual decisions, small communities, villages, right, 62 00:06:50,880 --> 00:06:57,870 and then up through to the national governments and international institutions as well. 63 00:06:57,870 --> 00:07:01,950 And I've tried to show how that can be done. It has to hang together. 64 00:07:01,950 --> 00:07:11,310 So we're looking at the multiplicity of problems operating at different scales and different speed. 65 00:07:11,310 --> 00:07:15,000 So there are local, regional and so forth. 66 00:07:15,000 --> 00:07:26,070 Up to the top. So it's we need a lot. So what I've tried to do is the the essentially to study the inequality between demand and supply, 67 00:07:26,070 --> 00:07:37,710 the one which you which you articulated a minutes ago and decomposed the demand in to the factors that make for it. 68 00:07:37,710 --> 00:07:42,600 And on the right hand side, that is true of the inequality, the supply side, 69 00:07:42,600 --> 00:07:48,090 the goods and services that the biosphere produces for us and we enjoy it. 70 00:07:48,090 --> 00:07:53,700 And the decomposition tells me the kind of parameters that need to be shifted. 71 00:07:53,700 --> 00:08:00,600 And of course, as you know, the way I decomposed it, borrowing from the work of natural scientists, 72 00:08:00,600 --> 00:08:08,820 a population per capita use of nature, a production of goods and services and a critical thing, 73 00:08:08,820 --> 00:08:19,200 an efficiency parameter, a parameter with which records the efficiency with which we convert nature's goods and services into final products. 74 00:08:19,200 --> 00:08:29,670 And so, of course, the rest of the review takes on each of the items and sees how to think about what kind of policies could be generated, 75 00:08:29,670 --> 00:08:34,950 what believe changes in our belief are required in order in our practise in order 76 00:08:34,950 --> 00:08:40,920 to push down the demand as you are pulling down the demand as you were suggesting. 77 00:08:40,920 --> 00:08:46,640 And of course, more on the technological side would be the right hand side of supply. 78 00:08:46,640 --> 00:08:51,270 The investment in nature and so forth. 79 00:08:51,270 --> 00:08:55,400 So I count, it's not a it's. OK. 80 00:08:55,400 --> 00:09:06,000 Another way of putting it to expand on it is to say that in the economics of biodiversity, although that's the title. 81 00:09:06,000 --> 00:09:08,620 It's really not the subject. 82 00:09:08,620 --> 00:09:15,700 Pretty much a few months after I started working on that, you realise that what I was grappling with was the economics of the entire biosphere. 83 00:09:15,700 --> 00:09:21,970 That's the the ultimate subject of study. So that's what it is about. 84 00:09:21,970 --> 00:09:30,460 Biodiversity is a characteristic of ecosystems. It's not the ecosystem itself. 85 00:09:30,460 --> 00:09:33,400 It's a characteristic of the future. 86 00:09:33,400 --> 00:09:45,760 So the what we don't have in the economics of this in the review is a simple measure like, say, carbon concentration in the atmosphere. 87 00:09:45,760 --> 00:09:50,890 You might think I would have said, let's start with biomass. 88 00:09:50,890 --> 00:10:00,510 Is, after all, carbon content. Of of a of the of the outcome, some terrible that you see, but we don't go that route. 89 00:10:00,510 --> 00:10:04,830 Instead, the basic building blocks our ecosystems and of course, 90 00:10:04,830 --> 00:10:17,580 they range in size and meaning it's a contextual thing and the goods and services that the processes that underlie the ecosystems produces. 91 00:10:17,580 --> 00:10:23,340 So that's where it's heart of the matter. And it's very much like, you know, the way economists to think of it. 92 00:10:23,340 --> 00:10:28,290 You have stocks of capital. These are ecosystems that produce goods and services flows. 93 00:10:28,290 --> 00:10:31,590 These are durable goods, but they can be appreciated. 94 00:10:31,590 --> 00:10:41,550 So you get a picture of how you might be able to influence both the demand and reduce the demand and increase the supply. 95 00:10:41,550 --> 00:10:47,970 And and how long do you think we have before we really have to get on top of this 96 00:10:47,970 --> 00:10:53,070 challenge of reducing demand on nature and on ecosystems and increasing supply? 97 00:10:53,070 --> 00:11:02,610 I mean, how long is it before we start to see really suffering the consequences of the degradation of nature and biodiversity losses? 98 00:11:02,610 --> 00:11:09,060 Or would you say we're already there, we're already seeing it? Well, the one level, of course, we've been seeing it. 99 00:11:09,060 --> 00:11:18,600 That's a small scale level for a long time. Villagers go under in Africa, South Asia, Latin America. 100 00:11:18,600 --> 00:11:24,450 So much of the distress migration we see is arising because their local ecosystems 101 00:11:24,450 --> 00:11:30,120 got degraded to the point where they can't support themselves and to try and move. 102 00:11:30,120 --> 00:11:34,980 But the neighbours don't want them either, because they are. They also are poor. 103 00:11:34,980 --> 00:11:41,820 They can't be welcoming. So in some sense, we're seeing the the effects of biodiversity loss. 104 00:11:41,820 --> 00:11:47,310 If you want to put it that way and say ecosystem productivity, loss, not so much biodiversity loss. 105 00:11:47,310 --> 00:11:58,680 But we've seen that and we have to think now move up to scale it up and see what might lie ahead for the global community. 106 00:11:58,680 --> 00:12:05,520 OK. Of course, the speed is varies, there are many, many processes that work. 107 00:12:05,520 --> 00:12:13,950 Carbon climate regulation is only one of the many services that nature provides. 108 00:12:13,950 --> 00:12:19,950 Nitrogen fixation is one. Decomposition of waste is another, pollination is a fourth and so forth. 109 00:12:19,950 --> 00:12:25,800 The multitude of those, they're all working in tandem at different speeds, 110 00:12:25,800 --> 00:12:33,000 and they are interconnected like any good you know, of economics with how these are interconnected. 111 00:12:33,000 --> 00:12:40,740 But the critical thing in my judgement is that what I learnt from the sciences is that they are complementary to one another. 112 00:12:40,740 --> 00:12:51,910 They're not substitutes. And that makes that comes to the point you just made, which is how close are we to a problem, a global problem? 113 00:12:51,910 --> 00:12:56,920 It's hot. Of course, I can't say with it. It won't be tomorrow. It won't be in five years time. 114 00:12:56,920 --> 00:13:01,360 It won't be in 10 years time. But unravelling can take place slowly. 115 00:13:01,360 --> 00:13:09,210 But you know, parts of the structure superstructure fracture. We are seeing aspects of it in climate. 116 00:13:09,210 --> 00:13:14,610 Because that's more visible experience, all of that biodiversity loss. 117 00:13:14,610 --> 00:13:19,590 Same things happening that to the wetlands get degraded. 118 00:13:19,590 --> 00:13:28,710 The coastal fisheries get degraded. Dead zones, those are all symptoms of fractures of our system. 119 00:13:28,710 --> 00:13:36,510 So, you know, it's not a question of the whole humanity going under, but this is a crisis situation. 120 00:13:36,510 --> 00:13:40,950 There's no question about it. The gap between demand and supply is increasing. 121 00:13:40,950 --> 00:13:50,400 It's large already, it's increasing. And this is coming from a variety of studies in Earth sciences, ecological sciences, 122 00:13:50,400 --> 00:13:53,610 environmental sciences and a few contributions by economists as well. 123 00:13:53,610 --> 00:13:59,940 They're all converging to the to the understanding that there is a big gap and it's increasing. 124 00:13:59,940 --> 00:14:04,050 And this can't go on because these systems are very non-linear. 125 00:14:04,050 --> 00:14:09,510 So the fracturing that takes place, I'm using the word fracture advisedly because these are not linear systems. 126 00:14:09,510 --> 00:14:20,910 Mm-Hmm. So you can shift thumbs-up parts and shift to different regimes like it's a dead zone is an example of that large dead zone and say, 127 00:14:20,910 --> 00:14:32,500 in the Gulf of Mexico, that's what it is. So it's something we ought to attend to as fast as possible in my judgement, and what does that mean? 128 00:14:32,500 --> 00:14:40,050 It completes complete, complete this response with thought that. 129 00:14:40,050 --> 00:14:49,270 The the review essentially ends by suggesting that it can only be done if we citizens. 130 00:14:49,270 --> 00:14:55,530 Engage with the issue. It's no good simply saying, you know, it's government's job, it's not their job, 131 00:14:55,530 --> 00:15:09,880 their job is to respond to us and unless we get excited about it and feel concerned about our descendants now, if only we could. 132 00:15:09,880 --> 00:15:16,750 If you think of two weeks ago when there was the suggestion of the European league. 133 00:15:16,750 --> 00:15:29,080 Football League. And if you saw the speed with which citizens responded to it with such ferocity that extremely rich people were stymied. 134 00:15:29,080 --> 00:15:33,800 Within two days. If only we could. 135 00:15:33,800 --> 00:15:40,370 Channel, that kind of emotional energy. To a problem which really is serious. 136 00:15:40,370 --> 00:15:46,610 And of course, we would make some progress. Mm-Hmm. And you think one of the reasons that this is so difficult that, you know, 137 00:15:46,610 --> 00:15:55,840 we don't see European Super League sort of passion aroused and action taken is that I hate to use the boiling frog metaphor, 138 00:15:55,840 --> 00:16:04,460 or not least because it's wrong. I gather folks don't fail to jump out of increasingly warm water because the 139 00:16:04,460 --> 00:16:09,710 non-linear narratives in the system at least a kind of regional and global scale, 140 00:16:09,710 --> 00:16:15,500 we're not quite seeing them dramatically hit us with multiple breadbasket failures and famines and so on. 141 00:16:15,500 --> 00:16:23,150 Yet, you know, we know they're coming. But until you can see them and tangibly taste them, it's a very abstract. 142 00:16:23,150 --> 00:16:29,370 It's very conceptual. It's it's, you know, it's the sort of problem that appeals to a mind like yours and mine. 143 00:16:29,370 --> 00:16:37,980 I dare say precisely because it's difficult and complex, but it's not straightforward for the average football fan, perhaps to understand. 144 00:16:37,980 --> 00:16:43,310 But on the other hand, everybody gets nature and they love nature, and they want nature to be protected. 145 00:16:43,310 --> 00:16:45,230 So I'm struggling to get my head around, 146 00:16:45,230 --> 00:16:54,320 whether in some ways this is a harder or an easier problem to get people excited about compared to climate change, which is very abstract. 147 00:16:54,320 --> 00:16:58,970 I mean, compared to protecting nature, which people do understand. What do you think? 148 00:16:58,970 --> 00:17:03,950 I think you're absolutely right. This is a very good question. I don't know the answer to it. 149 00:17:03,950 --> 00:17:14,810 Your garden might be flowering very well, even when things are going awry in the Amazon basin and they are doing the right there. 150 00:17:14,810 --> 00:17:22,550 So you would need to observe it. So there is an issue of being conscious, of aware of what's going on. 151 00:17:22,550 --> 00:17:27,750 And as always, the effects of it are going to be felt. 152 00:17:27,750 --> 00:17:37,190 Unevenly and as always, you know, there is an iron law in economics, which is the poor get hurt first. 153 00:17:37,190 --> 00:17:45,410 And then and go the rich, we rich, we are fortunate to be affected. 154 00:17:45,410 --> 00:17:50,400 So if if the poorer the Canaries in the mineshaft. 155 00:17:50,400 --> 00:17:57,620 And actually, I have a colleague who says that the amphibians are the canaries in the mine shaft here, and they're not doing very well either. 156 00:17:57,620 --> 00:18:05,900 How do we get the rich to realise that and to observe that when the poor aren't doing so well, when the frogs are dying off their necks? 157 00:18:05,900 --> 00:18:14,300 That's a hard question. Yeah. The trouble is that because of the multiplicity of causation in our in social sciences, 158 00:18:14,300 --> 00:18:24,710 we would put the loss of ecosystem productivity right at the bottom of the heap as an explanatory device for poverty. 159 00:18:24,710 --> 00:18:31,010 The first port of call is bad governance. That's why they're poor or there's a civil war. 160 00:18:31,010 --> 00:18:36,530 That's right. But that's, of course, proximate. You might want to ask why there is a civil war. 161 00:18:36,530 --> 00:18:41,900 Is there a battle for resources is going on? But we don't tend to do that. 162 00:18:41,900 --> 00:18:47,300 We have some simpler criteria, some proximate causes. 163 00:18:47,300 --> 00:18:54,200 For sure, governance is bad, but the lack of good governance may mean something deeper. 164 00:18:54,200 --> 00:18:56,330 And in the context of the review, of course, 165 00:18:56,330 --> 00:19:06,920 I focus attention on the productivity side of nature because it's these are prime asset on the basis of which farmers, fishermen, you name. 166 00:19:06,920 --> 00:19:16,850 It depends. You make the point there that we've really got to think hard about and trace back to the underlying drivers of things. 167 00:19:16,850 --> 00:19:22,550 In that case, the underlying drivers of poverty and maybe pressure on nature leads to resource scarcity, 168 00:19:22,550 --> 00:19:33,050 which leads to conflict, which leads to civil, which which leads to poverty. But let's Maranhao on a pose you perhaps a deeper question. 169 00:19:33,050 --> 00:19:39,200 What are the under? If nature is the underlying driver of some pressure on nature, the underlying growth of some of these social problems water. 170 00:19:39,200 --> 00:19:48,740 What's the underlying driver of the pressure on nature and in particular you've you've spent decades thinking about population, 171 00:19:48,740 --> 00:19:54,080 and it's a question that is frequently asked at Oxford Martin School events. 172 00:19:54,080 --> 00:19:59,750 I daresay events all around the world, there are just an awful lot of us now that humans, 173 00:19:59,750 --> 00:20:05,150 I mean, we're getting on towards eight billion numbers of ever rising. 174 00:20:05,150 --> 00:20:11,540 You've thought about this possibly harder than almost anybody else in any other economist I know. 175 00:20:11,540 --> 00:20:17,960 How do we how should we think about population as a driver of the pressure on nature? 176 00:20:17,960 --> 00:20:22,190 And what can we do? Do we want to be doing one child policies? 177 00:20:22,190 --> 00:20:27,920 Do we want to be intervening in people's fertility and productivity choices? 178 00:20:27,920 --> 00:20:31,910 You've written an awful lot on this. We'd love to hear some of your thoughts. 179 00:20:31,910 --> 00:20:38,120 Well, but being liberal is the final port of call in command and control goes out, 180 00:20:38,120 --> 00:20:43,340 saying, All right, so there are many other preliminary things to do, 181 00:20:43,340 --> 00:20:50,870 given the fact in view of the fact that the subject is essentially ignored by economists, sort of kind of a taboo subject. 182 00:20:50,870 --> 00:20:55,280 The only way to find it a democracy person who cares about democracy is there. 183 00:20:55,280 --> 00:21:05,480 They're not influential. By the way, I I work with demographers so well, what can we do about it? 184 00:21:05,480 --> 00:21:12,770 Well, first of all, I think one of the things that really bothers me is for us, the is the fact that we, 185 00:21:12,770 --> 00:21:23,420 when economists have built models of human motivation, which are egoistic, is we only it's a supermarket view of life in the supermarket. 186 00:21:23,420 --> 00:21:26,420 We think about what our needs are, our family needs. 187 00:21:26,420 --> 00:21:34,120 And if we don't, we don't ask ourselves how much of our family needs have been influenced by what others are doing. 188 00:21:34,120 --> 00:21:42,230 And why do I go for cheese of a particular type, if that is it because my neighbour eats it, but 60 where I'm going to eat? 189 00:21:42,230 --> 00:21:50,480 I think anthropologists and sociologists abundantly clear with a great deal of evidence of including historians, 190 00:21:50,480 --> 00:21:56,690 by the way that our preferences are socially embedded. 191 00:21:56,690 --> 00:22:00,920 But we look around, we are influenced by what others do. 192 00:22:00,920 --> 00:22:04,730 So there these are models of coordination. 193 00:22:04,730 --> 00:22:13,010 You know, you can have multiple outcomes, and some of the most successful family planning programmes have made use of it, 194 00:22:13,010 --> 00:22:17,790 of having women come together as groups as opposed to individuals. 195 00:22:17,790 --> 00:22:23,950 So it's not much point in asking a person, what would your ideal family size be? 196 00:22:23,950 --> 00:22:28,210 It's smart way of asking the question would be what would your ideal family size be? 197 00:22:28,210 --> 00:22:32,740 Should all your neighbours have two children? What would your ideal family size be? 198 00:22:32,740 --> 00:22:36,820 Should all your children, all your neighbours have three children and so forth? 199 00:22:36,820 --> 00:22:43,070 OK? And the suggestion is it'll be a monotonically increasing response. 200 00:22:43,070 --> 00:22:48,380 OK, so in that kind of a world, you're actually not giving up liberty. 201 00:22:48,380 --> 00:22:56,000 What you're doing is providing allowing an avenue where people discuss these matters in rational way. 202 00:22:56,000 --> 00:23:03,770 So designing family planning programmes in which it has huge mileage if you include, first of all, 203 00:23:03,770 --> 00:23:13,010 to have them done some 220 million women in their reproductive ages do not have access to modern family planning, 204 00:23:13,010 --> 00:23:18,380 so it's been really a neglected field, both in government and don't. 205 00:23:18,380 --> 00:23:25,820 Donor countries are less than one percent of aid from the EU goes into family planning, 206 00:23:25,820 --> 00:23:30,230 and the recipient countries regard family planning as a sort of it. 207 00:23:30,230 --> 00:23:38,990 They talk about empowering women, but when it comes to empowering their own bodies, so to speak, it doesn't seem to have much weight. 208 00:23:38,990 --> 00:23:50,600 So that's what a whole class of areas where we could really bring to bear making choices richer for people and that would bring population down. 209 00:23:50,600 --> 00:23:57,350 So that's the first port of call I would hope for. And there's a lot we have experienced. 210 00:23:57,350 --> 00:24:05,600 I mean, there were countries which spent money on family planning for South Korea, Taiwan after the Second World War. 211 00:24:05,600 --> 00:24:11,010 Look at them now and compare them with the Philippines, for example, because the differences. 212 00:24:11,010 --> 00:24:18,800 So that's extremely important. Having said that, there is a one final observation I'll make, but it doesn't colour the review, 213 00:24:18,800 --> 00:24:26,630 largely because I see the last port of call that I would go for would be command and control for obvious reasons. 214 00:24:26,630 --> 00:24:33,350 But ask ourselves the following question if the demand exceeds supply, as you know, 215 00:24:33,350 --> 00:24:39,050 in the sense that you mentioned the demand for goods and services, nature's goods and services, 216 00:24:39,050 --> 00:24:43,640 then there are externalities associated with reproduction, 217 00:24:43,640 --> 00:24:48,590 just as there are externalities associated with consumption, energy consumption and so forth. 218 00:24:48,590 --> 00:24:52,980 We are happy with the latter parts of it that we have to discuss the last kind of externality. 219 00:24:52,980 --> 00:24:56,840 That's what the economics of climate change is all about. 220 00:24:56,840 --> 00:25:03,930 But we are not very happy to think about the externalities that reproductive behaviour is causing for the future, for example. 221 00:25:03,930 --> 00:25:06,050 Okay. Now, if that is the case, 222 00:25:06,050 --> 00:25:18,860 if there are externalities economies we have a worry is the language of rights becomes tenuous because you're think one right against another? 223 00:25:18,860 --> 00:25:26,990 And if there are serious external effects, then you know the language of rights really going to get health. 224 00:25:26,990 --> 00:25:29,780 And therefore it's, you know, it's not. 225 00:25:29,780 --> 00:25:39,320 Let me put it this way, even a good liberal could think that command and control is not completely out of bounds to me to think about, 226 00:25:39,320 --> 00:25:44,510 because after all, we have command and control over many things in my life. You can't, you can't. 227 00:25:44,510 --> 00:25:49,550 You know, you're you're banned from beating me up, for example. 228 00:25:49,550 --> 00:25:54,030 You know where you can relax, you're not allowed to do that, right? 229 00:25:54,030 --> 00:25:57,450 It's hard digitally anyway, but you see what I mean. 230 00:25:57,450 --> 00:26:01,790 There's a heck of a lot of constraints that we are imposed on us because we 231 00:26:01,790 --> 00:26:08,390 voluntarily agreed to forego those liberties and there because of these externalities. 232 00:26:08,390 --> 00:26:13,700 Well, we enjoy the right not to be punched as we walk down the street. You want to do some shopping? 233 00:26:13,700 --> 00:26:21,050 Absolutely. So if we reframe this not as a kind of issue of rights, but as an issue of externalities, 234 00:26:21,050 --> 00:26:31,170 which then brings to bear all the classic economic tools is a conclusion that you would want to be taxing having children. 235 00:26:31,170 --> 00:26:35,750 Yeah. Well, you know, the truth is extremely difficult question to answer because, you know, 236 00:26:35,750 --> 00:26:43,250 there are poor people who are having it, so I wouldn't go that route for the moment anyway. 237 00:26:43,250 --> 00:26:47,580 Really go the route of technology in the sense of giving information to people. 238 00:26:47,580 --> 00:26:52,340 Mm-Hmm. Available tools for controlling their own lives. 239 00:26:52,340 --> 00:26:59,610 I think all the all the evidence to just go a huge way if you can bring, say, for example, 240 00:26:59,610 --> 00:27:04,610 the fertility transition in Africa in 20 years time rather than 40 years time, 241 00:27:04,610 --> 00:27:14,000 that will be a huge contribution to to to the future of Africa, if you like for African people. 242 00:27:14,000 --> 00:27:21,890 Yeah. You mentioned the importance of empowering women over their own bodies, and we speak as to men, obviously. 243 00:27:21,890 --> 00:27:31,610 But I would. Is it not also the case that just empowering women generally increases the opportunity cost of having children and reduces the, 244 00:27:31,610 --> 00:27:36,290 you know, the the narrow individual incentive to have children? 245 00:27:36,290 --> 00:27:42,850 And in addition to family planning in addition to these other interventions. 246 00:27:42,850 --> 00:27:48,010 Is not gender equality a key driver, perhaps, of environmental protection? 247 00:27:48,010 --> 00:27:51,610 Well, that's for sure. I think so. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. 248 00:27:51,610 --> 00:27:53,800 But this is a particularly cheap crude. 249 00:27:53,800 --> 00:28:03,670 That's why I've been emphasising it because family planning is nothing as expensive as as the education education, 250 00:28:03,670 --> 00:28:07,710 because education requires a huge number of complementary investments, 251 00:28:07,710 --> 00:28:17,950 not just not just schoolrooms buildings, but teachers who show up every day and children. 252 00:28:17,950 --> 00:28:23,290 I know there'll be many people listening in who are probably just punching the air and saying, finally, 253 00:28:23,290 --> 00:28:32,530 a conversation about population and the environment because there's an awful lot of our community who think this needs to be discussed much more, 254 00:28:32,530 --> 00:28:36,350 much more openly and honestly. So the review will be very welcome. 255 00:28:36,350 --> 00:28:47,050 And it's it's going it's massively oversimplifying to say this, but I think thinking through the population dimension is one of the key things. 256 00:28:47,050 --> 00:28:53,740 I think that we will take away from this review and it's entirely appropriate given given it's you who's written it. 257 00:28:53,740 --> 00:28:59,680 So and they're already some of the questions in the Q&A are more on population, which we'll get to soon. 258 00:28:59,680 --> 00:29:05,890 Thank you to all of you who've been surveying questions and answers as a slightly intimidating list in there. 259 00:29:05,890 --> 00:29:10,030 I actually still have five areas of my own to discuss with policy, 260 00:29:10,030 --> 00:29:20,020 but I think I'll curtail them in the spirit of sharing the time with with the the wider community here. 261 00:29:20,020 --> 00:29:30,580 I just before I do that, though, I just like to tap into two more areas, one around preferences and one around technology. 262 00:29:30,580 --> 00:29:38,260 Because if we think about how economists often approach environmental problem like this, where there's an analogy, 263 00:29:38,260 --> 00:29:44,440 you seek to price it, you know, we know that that's one of the core messages is let's price carbon for climate. 264 00:29:44,440 --> 00:29:48,310 Let's prise nature that get some people up in arms. 265 00:29:48,310 --> 00:29:55,480 George Monbiot is tuning in. I'm sure he'd be aghast and appalled, but other people say, Well, we just need to do it. 266 00:29:55,480 --> 00:30:00,250 But then there are those who say, Well, we do need to do it, but we're not doing it very well. What are the other levers? 267 00:30:00,250 --> 00:30:07,870 Because it's not going to be enough pressing nature and the other levers are shifting how people think about make sure that preferences, 268 00:30:07,870 --> 00:30:09,160 that consumption decisions, 269 00:30:09,160 --> 00:30:19,870 as well as their fertility decisions, and also thinking more deeply about the space of greener technologies, nature friendly technologies. 270 00:30:19,870 --> 00:30:24,700 So in this kind of I don't want to make it a horse race because these interventions are complementary. 271 00:30:24,700 --> 00:30:29,950 They're part of a portfolio. But how would you describe the the balance, the roles, 272 00:30:29,950 --> 00:30:39,460 the respective importance of interventions around shifting people's preferences and consumption decisions and how to do that? 273 00:30:39,460 --> 00:30:45,820 Part one, I guess the question and part two, where are the great hopes, technologically speaking, 274 00:30:45,820 --> 00:30:52,780 is it feasible for us to kind of innovate our way out of some of these crises? 275 00:30:52,780 --> 00:30:56,770 Well, that's tough. The the answer to the last question is no. 276 00:30:56,770 --> 00:31:02,190 I think the idea that technology will come to our rescue is deeply flawed. 277 00:31:02,190 --> 00:31:10,840 But many of these problems are not technological, it's really societal. And so that has to be taxed. 278 00:31:10,840 --> 00:31:15,580 I've come to this sequence of questions that are embedded in the discussion that you just had. 279 00:31:15,580 --> 00:31:20,920 First is, I think it's misleading to talk about pricing nature. 280 00:31:20,920 --> 00:31:23,560 We don't do that in the review. That's not what's. 281 00:31:23,560 --> 00:31:32,380 In fact, the first chapter has a longish box in which we say that the idea of valuing nature as a whole, 282 00:31:32,380 --> 00:31:37,120 the biosphere in order to earn $3 billion dollars a year of service. 283 00:31:37,120 --> 00:31:41,910 That's what the nature is. What is rubbish? Because there was no nature, we would be all dead. 284 00:31:41,910 --> 00:31:45,850 So I think so that's a gross underestimate of infinity. 285 00:31:45,850 --> 00:31:49,420 Yeah, that's a gross on the stoop. That's if that's so. 286 00:31:49,420 --> 00:31:52,240 But that's what I think comes to one's mind. 287 00:31:52,240 --> 00:31:57,410 And when one says, if we're talking about prices and the economics of biodiversity, then that must be what you mean. 288 00:31:57,410 --> 00:32:01,990 You don't mean that what you mean is changes now. Of course we are pricing it, everybody. 289 00:32:01,990 --> 00:32:06,130 Ask a farmer he or she owns a piece of land. 290 00:32:06,130 --> 00:32:13,420 I mean, to say that the person doesn't actually price it or doesn't recognise its price or and so forth is just an affront to life. 291 00:32:13,420 --> 00:32:16,960 I mean, no, this is crazy. So the issue is not pricing. 292 00:32:16,960 --> 00:32:24,430 The issue is that the price is wrong. That it doesn't go with the common good, 293 00:32:24,430 --> 00:32:36,820 the idea in economics is to try and build a society in which the incentives individuals and communities have are consistent with the common good. 294 00:32:36,820 --> 00:32:40,600 Bringing about the common good. That's what we mean by accounting practises or shadow prices. 295 00:32:40,600 --> 00:32:44,920 That's the whole idea of it. OK, so that you can decentralise, you can let people do. 296 00:32:44,920 --> 00:32:51,490 But it will be guided by these prices, which are another way of saying that there constraints they're feasible. 297 00:32:51,490 --> 00:32:58,480 Sets will be so defined that they choose in accordance with the chosen and the sustainable world. 298 00:32:58,480 --> 00:33:01,270 In this case, we don't have to be very sophisticated with closing. 299 00:33:01,270 --> 00:33:05,740 The gap is let's let's stick to the idea of closing the gap between demand and supply. 300 00:33:05,740 --> 00:33:12,820 OK, so the question is, can you run through with the accounting prices or shadow prices through the entire discussion, 301 00:33:12,820 --> 00:33:18,190 through the entire body of institutional reforms that you want to consider? 302 00:33:18,190 --> 00:33:22,610 The answer is no. And the reason is that you do need quantity constraints. 303 00:33:22,610 --> 00:33:26,380 You do need regulations. Regulations mean this. 304 00:33:26,380 --> 00:33:35,230 You can't do this. You can't do that. And the reason again is it comes straight from economics, but really good, sophisticated economics, 305 00:33:35,230 --> 00:33:39,510 which is that these are non-linear systems, so threshold of sitting out there. 306 00:33:39,510 --> 00:33:43,720 There are huge uncertainties to whether the fresh rules are. That's true. 307 00:33:43,720 --> 00:33:46,900 And the third is that not everybody knows the same things. 308 00:33:46,900 --> 00:33:54,900 Some people who are living in the ecosystem know the ecosystem downside more better than the regulator. 309 00:33:54,900 --> 00:33:59,280 And these three things together, and you have a non-linear pricing system, 310 00:33:59,280 --> 00:34:03,630 huge nonlinearity will mean an extreme think in terms of quality constraints. 311 00:34:03,630 --> 00:34:12,590 So protected zones. We think about them, we say, let's keep 30 percent of land and sea spray. 312 00:34:12,590 --> 00:34:17,330 Well, that's that's quantity constraints. They are not you're not allowed to go in that right. 313 00:34:17,330 --> 00:34:26,300 The problem that is going to be what happens to the rest of the 70 percent. Suppose we do have 30 percent, somehow imagine that we all agree. 314 00:34:26,300 --> 00:34:30,470 So we have a problem with the 70 percent and that 70 percent is what I suppose. 315 00:34:30,470 --> 00:34:34,670 Much of the review is concerned with. So that's the second point I'd like to make. 316 00:34:34,670 --> 00:34:41,630 The third point is really it's all. I think there's a huge information gap and we've covered that a bit before. 317 00:34:41,630 --> 00:34:50,740 When you asked as to whether. The economic the economics of biodiversity loss is something that you really can't not. 318 00:34:50,740 --> 00:34:56,440 And the my guess is that it would be painful process. 319 00:34:56,440 --> 00:35:05,620 We have to all of us have to keep on working honestly as far as possible to educate the public to not in terms of the science necessarily, 320 00:35:05,620 --> 00:35:10,900 but to make them aware that, ah, we are gone, gone down the wrong route. 321 00:35:10,900 --> 00:35:21,650 And I think we economists have a lot to answer for. And it was quite explicit about periodically I criticised my own profession when I say economics, 322 00:35:21,650 --> 00:35:27,500 it's the practise makes a subject just fantastic, amazing that we've got. 323 00:35:27,500 --> 00:35:34,790 But we really have made a mess of things by creating models of growth and development in which nature doesn't appear at all. 324 00:35:34,790 --> 00:35:43,880 Mm-Hmm. Mm-Hmm. Well, with some exceptions, including you from the 70s, but but yeah, not not in that sort of granularity or in the mainstream. 325 00:35:43,880 --> 00:35:50,960 The main journals, the journals, I think these points are well made. I'm going to move us to the Q&A. 326 00:35:50,960 --> 00:35:55,670 This is a policy. We've been running these events for a while at the office are not in school. 327 00:35:55,670 --> 00:35:56,870 Many of them, 328 00:35:56,870 --> 00:36:08,000 I haven't been in an event where I've had 30 questions lined up at this stage with an with an awful lot of commentary on many of the questions. 329 00:36:08,000 --> 00:36:20,150 The number one question voted up 14 times from Cassandra is about the shift away, notes the the importance of shifting away from GDP. 330 00:36:20,150 --> 00:36:26,620 And she observes that there seems to be, in the review, 331 00:36:26,620 --> 00:36:33,350 a kind of call for a shift away from traditional capitalism without explicitly saying the C-word. 332 00:36:33,350 --> 00:36:43,690 But she asks, What's the what's the viable alternative? And is green growth, which is still growth that's surely unsustainable in the long run? 333 00:36:43,690 --> 00:36:49,580 Is this a point? And others further down the list of asked similar questions on similar similar themes? 334 00:36:49,580 --> 00:36:56,760 We can't keep growing forever. So what is the model that is going to replace the model that we have currently now? 335 00:36:56,760 --> 00:37:03,290 Of course, I may not necessarily agree with all of the premises in these questions, but they're very good questions. 336 00:37:03,290 --> 00:37:13,730 Well, thank you very much. The Chapter four star review has some star chapters, by the way, where I've kept the technical side of things. 337 00:37:13,730 --> 00:37:16,430 And of course, there are technical side things, old boxes. 338 00:37:16,430 --> 00:37:27,320 But of course, star is the one which has the prototypical growth and development model model of economic positive economic possibilities. 339 00:37:27,320 --> 00:37:36,380 Use the word growth and development any more economic possibilities in which nature is absolutely central in. 340 00:37:36,380 --> 00:37:49,070 If I want to describe it picturesque, I would say it's the human economy is embedded within nature in the way we live in our home. 341 00:37:49,070 --> 00:38:00,350 It covers us. So no matter how what wonderful furniture you may have, how many lovely pieces of art you have, are you, whatever possessions you have, 342 00:38:00,350 --> 00:38:09,770 all come up will be disturbed will be useless if the roof falls apart, if the floor sinks and so forth. 343 00:38:09,770 --> 00:38:13,640 So the model has that. That's the other thing. 344 00:38:13,640 --> 00:38:14,690 The model has, 345 00:38:14,690 --> 00:38:29,930 which really creates the limitations of economic growth as we know it is the fact that you have traces of public activity from source to think so. 346 00:38:29,930 --> 00:38:35,330 It takes the material balance very seriously that all the waste we produce has to 347 00:38:35,330 --> 00:38:40,340 be then recycled and the recycling is done by Mother Nature for the most part. 348 00:38:40,340 --> 00:38:45,890 And if you stretch that service too much, then other things get that. 349 00:38:45,890 --> 00:38:50,630 So the idea that it's this is biodegradable, it's fine. 350 00:38:50,630 --> 00:39:02,150 It's not fine because the amount of biodegradable and the amount of refuse you throw into the system exceeds its capacity. 351 00:39:02,150 --> 00:39:09,710 Then, of course, other things go wrong. So the model has that, OK, what would it be? 352 00:39:09,710 --> 00:39:20,030 Suppose just you have a thought experiment where you've created an environment in which we we have closed the gap between demand and supply, 353 00:39:20,030 --> 00:39:24,150 let's say, which is the minimum requirement for sustainable development, by the way. 354 00:39:24,150 --> 00:39:28,930 I mean, obviously that then what will the world will look like? 355 00:39:28,930 --> 00:39:37,580 I don't know. And I think it would be wrong to speculate because they are so decentralised in the world we live in is that we 356 00:39:37,580 --> 00:39:44,260 understanding the world we live in is we can't predict people are going to respond to the what we can do it best. 357 00:39:44,260 --> 00:39:52,300 As an economist is to try and provide the environment in which people can choose and choose well, aligned with the common good. 358 00:39:52,300 --> 00:40:02,630 And here the common good simply is the simple stuff, which is reduce the income and impact inequality, inequality and inequality and inequality. 359 00:40:02,630 --> 00:40:09,400 So that's a very minimal requirement. How do we what kind of technological change will take place? 360 00:40:09,400 --> 00:40:13,540 I don't know. All I do know is it won't be rapacious of nature. 361 00:40:13,540 --> 00:40:17,710 Unlike the technological change that we have experienced over the past 200 years, 362 00:40:17,710 --> 00:40:24,130 largely because nature has been free, so entrepreneurs are put to economise on nature. 363 00:40:24,130 --> 00:40:29,260 It's the cheapest thing on Earth, so you go for technological change. 364 00:40:29,260 --> 00:40:31,000 New technologies which are rapacious, 365 00:40:31,000 --> 00:40:40,150 which which economise on the more expensive factors of production that will not happen in this world that we are imagining just now. 366 00:40:40,150 --> 00:40:44,410 So we don't know what kind of technological, what kind of lifestyle will choose to have. 367 00:40:44,410 --> 00:40:53,000 But we also adapt and we'll also invent ways of living, which are good for us in a very different price structure. 368 00:40:53,000 --> 00:41:03,710 So that view, I think at best, we economists can do, rather than speculate as to whether this will mean growth must be zero and by gosh, 369 00:41:03,710 --> 00:41:08,900 we don't know what will be there to look forward to. 370 00:41:08,900 --> 00:41:16,820 We just need channel our activities in such a way that will I'm sure we'll do the best we can until we will discover new ways of doing things, 371 00:41:16,820 --> 00:41:20,840 and I don't think we can. We can speculate on what they will be. 372 00:41:20,840 --> 00:41:26,110 That's there is a thread through economics that goes back a long way that you 373 00:41:26,110 --> 00:41:31,760 you're part of this kind of golden thread from John Stuart Mill through to Cains. 374 00:41:31,760 --> 00:41:36,980 And the review that, without necessarily speculating on the details, 375 00:41:36,980 --> 00:41:45,410 is that this is kind of kind of another way of engaging with Cassandra's question that we will 376 00:41:45,410 --> 00:41:52,610 need to get to a stage where we are less obsessed about getting on and more focussed on. 377 00:41:52,610 --> 00:42:00,080 I think the art of living perhaps was Mitchell's expression. And economic possibilities for our grandchildren. 378 00:42:00,080 --> 00:42:03,650 Use different language and your point. 379 00:42:03,650 --> 00:42:06,380 Martha seems to me to be completely correct that in such a world, 380 00:42:06,380 --> 00:42:13,100 whether we're whether we're still growing the value of goods and services that humans provide one another, 381 00:42:13,100 --> 00:42:18,590 we'll definitely be in a stationary state of material flows where those flows are sexualised, 382 00:42:18,590 --> 00:42:25,460 where the demands placed on nature for returning the resources that we take from the biosphere back to the biosphere 383 00:42:25,460 --> 00:42:32,210 are way lower because we've designed the way in which we're using those resources in a completely different fashion. 384 00:42:32,210 --> 00:42:35,450 For instance, the Oxford Martin School has a programme on the future of plastics, 385 00:42:35,450 --> 00:42:44,900 is looking at the possibility of taking a very limited palette of monomers that naturally return to nature once we're done with them. 386 00:42:44,900 --> 00:42:51,860 There's a big ask and we're not there yet, so, you know, don't get too excited, but I think that's the that has to be the vision. 387 00:42:51,860 --> 00:43:01,070 And I guess perhaps we're agnostic, you know, in the medium term, whether that means growth or not in the developed and rich countries. 388 00:43:01,070 --> 00:43:06,050 But what about this question of growth for the poorest? 389 00:43:06,050 --> 00:43:11,330 If you're in the bottom billion, you desperately want greater prosperity. 390 00:43:11,330 --> 00:43:14,630 How do we manage to deliver that? Because we have to. 391 00:43:14,630 --> 00:43:23,720 We want to. It's the right thing to do and avoid the impact inequality getting more unequal. 392 00:43:23,720 --> 00:43:25,040 Very good question again. 393 00:43:25,040 --> 00:43:35,090 But think now of if I come back a try and not give a direct answer for a good reason because we want to go to the if you like, 394 00:43:35,090 --> 00:43:37,790 the bottom of the barrel to see what's going on. 395 00:43:37,790 --> 00:43:49,180 And one of the things that the review points to is the fact that this mispricing of natural capital, not nature, but natural capital. 396 00:43:49,180 --> 00:44:00,500 Has resulted in huge transfer of wealth. From the poorest countries to the richest countries, because inputs from there are underpriced. 397 00:44:00,500 --> 00:44:11,250 And since the inputs from there are primary goods, I'm not talking in loose terms now, primary products, timber and so forth. 398 00:44:11,250 --> 00:44:18,280 If they're underpriced because the they're not priced adequately, they're. 399 00:44:18,280 --> 00:44:24,610 Below social, the social cost in there, in there, in those countries, then of course, that's wealth transfer. 400 00:44:24,610 --> 00:44:31,840 So when we're really in the in the name of free trade or open trade opening up of trade, 401 00:44:31,840 --> 00:44:36,280 we've actually done a huge disservice to the poorest countries. 402 00:44:36,280 --> 00:44:39,970 And again, this is not it's not a story of exploitation, by the way. 403 00:44:39,970 --> 00:44:43,180 They didn't know. We didn't know. Or at least we know nobody. 404 00:44:43,180 --> 00:44:48,050 People pretended they didn't know that there was a transfer going on because there was the wrong pricing mechanism. 405 00:44:48,050 --> 00:44:50,380 Okay. So of course, 406 00:44:50,380 --> 00:44:59,410 they need help because that's saying you want to raise their standard of living in terms of the provision in goods like food and food clothing, 407 00:44:59,410 --> 00:45:09,570 you know, that goes out saying. And that would mean that once again, there's a temptation to say we have to give up things that are in. 408 00:45:09,570 --> 00:45:16,530 The point is, I just don't know how it'll just how the imaginary world we were just discussing a few minutes ago where we 409 00:45:16,530 --> 00:45:22,050 have close the gap between the demand and supply so that you have completely different pricing structure. 410 00:45:22,050 --> 00:45:29,340 It may happen and it's not happening in one go. Maybe 10, 15 years or so, even if that happens, 411 00:45:29,340 --> 00:45:38,220 even then that world will be one where it's hard to know in advance what our living standards are going to be, what the living stuff. 412 00:45:38,220 --> 00:45:41,250 But we do know they are living standard of the poorest would be better because 413 00:45:41,250 --> 00:45:46,200 they won't be giving up their wealth in the way they're doing at the moment. Not for sure. 414 00:45:46,200 --> 00:45:52,680 We are giving them. There is aid going on, there is foreign aid that's not to be discounted, 415 00:45:52,680 --> 00:46:02,220 but it is striking to me that we economists have sold the idea of globalisation without 416 00:46:02,220 --> 00:46:07,500 asking the price structure in which globalised under which globalisation takes place. 417 00:46:07,500 --> 00:46:16,410 We really haven't. And I think the price structure that I'm concerned with, of course, is the price of natural capital. 418 00:46:16,410 --> 00:46:24,630 Yeah, you in part, answered Jackson's question here about, you know, where why not start with the rich? 419 00:46:24,630 --> 00:46:29,910 Because actually, we're the ones imposing the main resource burden on nature. 420 00:46:29,910 --> 00:46:40,320 And you know, we often talk about and the question I just ask you is how do we manage to elevate the prosperity of the billion poorest? 421 00:46:40,320 --> 00:46:43,410 And you've given a good answer, I think, partly to Jacqueline's question as well. 422 00:46:43,410 --> 00:46:52,800 Actually, if we priced natural capital correctly, then that would go part of the way towards helping to lift those billion out of poverty. 423 00:46:52,800 --> 00:47:00,210 But they're just to just to push the point a little bit further. I think Jackson probably is partly happy with that answer. 424 00:47:00,210 --> 00:47:06,390 Are there not other things that we in the rich countries should be taking more serious? 425 00:47:06,390 --> 00:47:16,800 You should be doing more proactively to help at the one, on the one hand, elevate and lift up, increase the prosperity of the bottom billion. 426 00:47:16,800 --> 00:47:29,380 As Paul would described, the billion poorest and also protect our natural capital is the responsibility, not with us. 427 00:47:29,380 --> 00:47:41,030 Well, yeah, but it's also equally argued the responsibility is for the leaders of those countries, and they haven't been led all that brilliantly. 428 00:47:41,030 --> 00:47:52,130 And I think polite in polite society, we do not talk about the that governments that exist in the poorest parts of the world, 429 00:47:52,130 --> 00:47:56,960 but every time you pick up the newspaper, you find somebody who's been running the place for 50 years, 40 years. 430 00:47:56,960 --> 00:48:01,340 It's a routine and we gloss over it because you know what's to say that? 431 00:48:01,340 --> 00:48:08,000 But they're adults and it's their societies. So it requires effort on both sides. 432 00:48:08,000 --> 00:48:16,430 No question about it. And I think but I think there was a part of your question have to do with green investment and green growth. 433 00:48:16,430 --> 00:48:22,230 Let's keep the growth side out of it because we don't know what it is that we are looking at. 434 00:48:22,230 --> 00:48:30,530 It's not GDP, that's for sure. We're looking at wealth, wealth, inclusive wealth, wealth that includes natural capital as a stock. 435 00:48:30,530 --> 00:48:41,170 So we're talking about growth in that of possibly. And there it seems to me that it's. 436 00:48:41,170 --> 00:48:47,260 The weakness has been the classical economists thought of a stationary state, you're quite right. 437 00:48:47,260 --> 00:48:53,050 As far as I know, I'm not an expert on the history of economic thought by any means. 438 00:48:53,050 --> 00:48:56,980 But as far as I know, they they didn't have nature in it. 439 00:48:56,980 --> 00:49:01,810 Nakano had land, but it was indestructible and of different grades. 440 00:49:01,810 --> 00:49:08,840 That's for sure, and they didn't have technological change. OK, that's in the art of living, as I say. 441 00:49:08,840 --> 00:49:13,050 But yes, we have smart technological progress in the way that we would conceive of it. 442 00:49:13,050 --> 00:49:15,490 Yeah, right. Exactly. Absolutely. 443 00:49:15,490 --> 00:49:22,240 What we've taken away from that in the post-war models of growth and development has been the technological change in 444 00:49:22,240 --> 00:49:31,120 the in the sense that you just now pointed out without asking without the other ever and not having nature in it. 445 00:49:31,120 --> 00:49:38,860 That's skewed the discussion completely because every time you talk about natural capital, it's one of those technological progress. 446 00:49:38,860 --> 00:49:50,260 And that's what we used to be little the early literature on on, on the finite Earth, 447 00:49:50,260 --> 00:49:57,100 and they have the equipment to counter in the way I think you and I do. 448 00:49:57,100 --> 00:50:03,320 Hence, the review. Well, I would personally love to spend more time on this question. 449 00:50:03,320 --> 00:50:11,350 I think it's really vital. Actually, technological change isn't enough to solve the problem, but yes, it's certainly not sufficient. 450 00:50:11,350 --> 00:50:16,810 But some of it, I think, is necessary as well, for sure, addressing people. 451 00:50:16,810 --> 00:50:20,650 That's another long discussion and we're already running out of time. 452 00:50:20,650 --> 00:50:28,870 So I'm going to pick up the other top two for the moment in terms of responsibility, responsibility, lying with the rich world in particular. 453 00:50:28,870 --> 00:50:37,450 So question from Andy here about the responsibility of the UK government in particular and Her Majesty's Treasury. 454 00:50:37,450 --> 00:50:46,150 So his question specifically is do you think the Treasury will implement the recommendations of your review in full? 455 00:50:46,150 --> 00:50:47,710 And if not, can we do it ourselves? 456 00:50:47,710 --> 00:50:54,820 And of course, not all of your recommendations and not even the majority of them were for the Treasury itself, but all the same. 457 00:50:54,820 --> 00:50:59,140 I think you get the gist of the question. Yes, of course. 458 00:50:59,140 --> 00:51:07,570 It's impossible for me to say because at the moment, the Treasury's preparing the response, it's a part of the protocol response to the review. 459 00:51:07,570 --> 00:51:16,210 And when that's prepared, we'll get a sense of how much they would be willing to absorb or feel they can absorb, absorb. 460 00:51:16,210 --> 00:51:24,070 But let's make it clear. Many of the review's recommendations are ones which over which one country has very little leverage. 461 00:51:24,070 --> 00:51:31,090 So one of the recommendations that I'm really keen on is the creation given that we have Cop 26, 462 00:51:31,090 --> 00:51:38,590 Cop 15 coming up the creation establishment of an international transnational organisation like the World Bank I Amendment, 463 00:51:38,590 --> 00:51:44,830 which were created after the war. We have now another crisis situation, a really serious crisis. 464 00:51:44,830 --> 00:51:58,960 And if we could be magnanimous and imaginative enough to have a constitution create an institution which monitors and manages these open resources, 465 00:51:58,960 --> 00:52:03,580 the Global Commons Global Common Public Goods. 466 00:52:03,580 --> 00:52:08,980 After all, the World Bank and IMF were designed to produce public goods. 467 00:52:08,980 --> 00:52:18,670 Those were international public goods, global public goods and actual stability or development, as the case may be. 468 00:52:18,670 --> 00:52:24,610 So that's not something that the Treasury can command best if it feels it's a good idea. 469 00:52:24,610 --> 00:52:28,690 Maybe the government will suggest it and work towards it. 470 00:52:28,690 --> 00:52:38,380 But you know, it's it's something that has to be agreed upon and accepted and easy tactically by many countries. 471 00:52:38,380 --> 00:52:45,610 But the reason the recommendation has some attraction, at least even at the first cut, 472 00:52:45,610 --> 00:52:51,370 is that it could be revenue generating because it would be charging. 473 00:52:51,370 --> 00:52:59,470 It would create a charge for using the open oceans, for example, for transport or for fishing and so forth. 474 00:52:59,470 --> 00:53:06,190 And we might be able to use some of it to subsidise those countries which are sitting on some of the biggest, 475 00:53:06,190 --> 00:53:11,890 largest global public goods, but they are within national jurisdiction. 476 00:53:11,890 --> 00:53:21,050 Like the rainforest. Tropical Rainforest Economics tells us that they ought to be compensated by the rest of us for protecting them. 477 00:53:21,050 --> 00:53:26,540 And of course, all this requires something beyond me to even imagine the discussion of that sort. 478 00:53:26,540 --> 00:53:30,620 But that's the logic that drives you in that direction. 479 00:53:30,620 --> 00:53:37,040 So and that kind of thing, the government can do it much other than perhaps hopefully they will think it's a good idea. 480 00:53:37,040 --> 00:53:46,400 Then there are many small things, for example, the suggestion that we move to a system of national accounts which are like balance sheets. 481 00:53:46,400 --> 00:53:50,630 That's something I think we would be, except my guess is going that direction. 482 00:53:50,630 --> 00:53:59,000 Many countries are moving in that direction. And what the review does is to really articulate it properly thematically. 483 00:53:59,000 --> 00:54:09,560 And it's the third, which is I think it may well be that we will find out the greening of national 484 00:54:09,560 --> 00:54:17,930 income expenditure accounts in Treasury and other departments at the same time. 485 00:54:17,930 --> 00:54:25,040 One of the recommendations is that we shouldn't be only concerned. We shouldn't delegate only the Department of the Environment. 486 00:54:25,040 --> 00:54:34,190 With this class of issues. Every project should be screened for its impacts on the nature of pretty straightforward, cost-benefit analysis. 487 00:54:34,190 --> 00:54:39,120 It's just that there's a missing items and the Treasury's as. 488 00:54:39,120 --> 00:54:44,220 It's as good a place to stop that as in the Bank of England and so forth. 489 00:54:44,220 --> 00:54:52,290 So I can't say in advance, but if there is a whole range of recommendations that will be made and let's just see, 490 00:54:52,290 --> 00:54:57,240 I hope very much they will find them to be attractive. 491 00:54:57,240 --> 00:55:03,240 I think with wonderful, I can't resist saying that on your first on the big one on the new organisation, 492 00:55:03,240 --> 00:55:09,900 I think there are few people there better equipped to talk to that one than in your Randerson, 493 00:55:09,900 --> 00:55:12,660 of course, who leads the United Nations Environment Programme, 494 00:55:12,660 --> 00:55:19,470 who will be joining us next in this series on the desk to review on the 20th of May in two weeks time. 495 00:55:19,470 --> 00:55:25,890 So I will put that specific recommendation to Inger and see what she has to say. 496 00:55:25,890 --> 00:55:32,280 Those of you listening in can tune in on the 20th and we'll continue a mediated 497 00:55:32,280 --> 00:55:37,710 discussion between parts ending up on the accounts question that leads me rather nicely, 498 00:55:37,710 --> 00:55:47,690 and I'm very conscious of time, but there is a heavily upvoted question here from Tim on this. 499 00:55:47,690 --> 00:55:51,990 It's a question you will know and love if we're pricing things. 500 00:55:51,990 --> 00:56:01,470 How do we avoid just reducing nature to yeah, which is irreplaceable source of life correctly, 501 00:56:01,470 --> 00:56:07,350 in Tim's words, into a set of tradable figures on balance sheets and income statements? 502 00:56:07,350 --> 00:56:16,990 And do we therefore need to just. Forget about this pricing and economics agenda, because we're just mischaracterising nature. 503 00:56:16,990 --> 00:56:23,260 Some people would even say it's that characterisation of nature that is causing the problems in the first place. 504 00:56:23,260 --> 00:56:29,980 Well, the I should say that the brief period that could spell it out, the view is, I think, 505 00:56:29,980 --> 00:56:40,630 fairly explicit when I talk in terms of the wealth estimates it includes, there will be lots of items, but there will be no prices placed. 506 00:56:40,630 --> 00:56:47,080 So then what happens? Well, you offer stock figures for the stock. 507 00:56:47,080 --> 00:56:55,720 So the if you can't, if you can't price worthless, you will remember what we are studying. 508 00:56:55,720 --> 00:56:59,800 Let me come back to this because from the beginning, 509 00:56:59,800 --> 00:57:07,580 these wealth accounts are accounts which are showing you the change in wealth over time as you move from one year to another. 510 00:57:07,580 --> 00:57:11,260 Okay, so the absolute value of wealth doesn't have much of a meaning. 511 00:57:11,260 --> 00:57:21,050 Its comparisons which have a meaning, you are asking Are we are we leaving behind a country which is wealthier today than it was yesterday? 512 00:57:21,050 --> 00:57:28,480 Because that's what you asking is a change you're measuring. All right. And you're saying, Well, not everything can be priced fine. 513 00:57:28,480 --> 00:57:42,770 Those that are not, you provide quantity. Estimates how much of forest cover, what's the status of the wetlands that we inherited last year? 514 00:57:42,770 --> 00:57:48,620 How are we leaving it this year? So the national accounts will have quantity statements, description, 515 00:57:48,620 --> 00:57:53,510 descriptive statements about the quality of the capital that we're leaving behind. 516 00:57:53,510 --> 00:58:03,290 Okay. So if there is a problem with valuing something either because it's difficult or because you find it insulting to do it? 517 00:58:03,290 --> 00:58:10,400 And insulting of nature to do it. Never mind. Keep them and stop this sacred growth. 518 00:58:10,400 --> 00:58:17,390 You don't price the state sacred growth. You say we mismanaged the sacred groves this last year, 519 00:58:17,390 --> 00:58:22,070 the healthier state than they were before, or are they in the worst states and the worst state? 520 00:58:22,070 --> 00:58:26,360 What's going on? Why are we desecrating a sacred grove? 521 00:58:26,360 --> 00:58:34,640 Let me put it that way to you. That's the way the accounts should be provided. In other words, the idea is that if you care about something. 522 00:58:34,640 --> 00:58:42,650 Then display that care, and what we economists can do is to provide the grammar with which you can do that 523 00:58:42,650 --> 00:58:47,150 to make it comparable set of statements so you know what the trade-offs are. 524 00:58:47,150 --> 00:58:53,000 They come back to something that I've been mentioning in my talks recently in India. 525 00:58:53,000 --> 00:58:58,790 The Ganges is a holy river. I mean, it's about as holy as it can be. 526 00:58:58,790 --> 00:59:09,040 She's a goddess. OK? Five 600 million people live in the Gangetic plain into Gangetic Plain, and it's one of the most polluted rivers on Earth. 527 00:59:09,040 --> 00:59:18,130 Now you've got a balancing act you needs and wants to poor people, Trump the fact that it's a holy river, 528 00:59:18,130 --> 00:59:23,680 and yet of course, we have ways of trying to come to terms with these contradictions at once. 529 00:59:23,680 --> 00:59:33,850 If you ask, as I did once a great scholar, how do you reconcile the fact that this is our holiest river and we but we just, 530 00:59:33,850 --> 00:59:38,470 you know, we treat it so badly, so it doesn't matter. She doesn't mind she it. 531 00:59:38,470 --> 00:59:47,680 She can't be effective. She's the goddess. Oh, that's a very good answer, because in our lives, we have this kind of conflict all the time. 532 00:59:47,680 --> 00:59:53,450 Think of the as long as you were growing up, you are sure you neglected your parents sometimes. 533 00:59:53,450 --> 00:59:56,790 And that's about as all your thing as you can be, and then what do you say? 534 00:59:56,790 --> 01:00:01,250 Well, I've been busy. They will understand why I didn't call. 535 01:00:01,250 --> 01:00:05,240 I used to do that routinely in my life. My parents were alive. 536 01:00:05,240 --> 01:00:09,290 They feel awful about it, but they were. But you have to live with it. 537 01:00:09,290 --> 01:00:16,700 So I think we ought not to become too precious about this. National nature matters to us for a variety of reasons. 538 01:00:16,700 --> 01:00:24,530 There means as well as they are and they're their source of our our our inner life. 539 01:00:24,530 --> 01:00:28,670 Fine. Account for that. Keep that in mind. 540 01:00:28,670 --> 01:00:32,720 But your records ought to have those thoughts in them. 541 01:00:32,720 --> 01:00:35,900 And that's what national accounts should be. Yes. 542 01:00:35,900 --> 01:00:45,710 And we're not pretending for a minute that they capture the full values, religious values, spiritual values, all the other values of nature. 543 01:00:45,710 --> 01:00:50,450 Keep a tab on that. That's the main thing that will that is a great place to end. 544 01:00:50,450 --> 01:00:57,350 I think both on the potential of economics and of the limitations fundamental of economics to help deal with this problem. 545 01:00:57,350 --> 01:01:02,300 But I think we've made a very big step forward with this beastly document. 546 01:01:02,300 --> 01:01:11,360 It's a fine achievement of triumph and achievement. Thank you for everything you've done for the profession on this review and for joining us today. 547 01:01:11,360 --> 01:01:19,880 It's been a real pleasure for me. I apologise to all of you numbering well over 30 of you who asked questions that were not able to be answered. 548 01:01:19,880 --> 01:01:27,200 We clearly needed at least another hour. We've thought it's not that surprising, to be honest, but if you enjoyed this, 549 01:01:27,200 --> 01:01:34,400 do come along and join us on the 20th with, you know, Anderson, the head of United Nations Environment Programme, 550 01:01:34,400 --> 01:01:40,490 and then Professor Dame Henrietta Moore and versus to Charles Godfrey, the director of the Oxford Mountain School, 551 01:01:40,490 --> 01:01:47,780 will be in conversation on the 3rd of June and again in this series on the Dasgupta Review on rethinking planetary prosperity. 552 01:01:47,780 --> 01:01:51,650 Are we measuring what we value? Well, thank you very much. 553 01:01:51,650 --> 01:01:58,260 I want to have the last word, if I may, which is, first of all, to say thank you so much for inviting me. 554 01:01:58,260 --> 01:02:02,750 It's always a pleasure to chat with you. I've known you since you were a graduate student, 555 01:02:02,750 --> 01:02:14,270 so you know that the other thing I want to say to the audience is that in a way, Cameron's being deceptive. 556 01:02:14,270 --> 01:02:20,570 He was on my advisory panel. So he's pretty responsible for the review. 557 01:02:20,570 --> 01:02:25,790 OK, thank you very much for all your help with it. It's my pleasure. 558 01:02:25,790 --> 01:02:26,284 Thank you.