The price of everything and the value of nothing

By Tony Whitbread

Chief Executive

Last November, the Scottish Wildlife Trust hosted an extremely important event - “The World Forum on Natural Capital”. I was one of around 600 people from 45 countries who attended and we were there to discuss the benefits that nature provides to people.

Not to be confused with “putting a price on nature”, a natural capital approach aims to recognise that nature is enormously valuable – in ethical and moral terms as well as because it provides most of what we need to make life both possible and worthwhile. The problem with our current economic system is that nature, while being absolutely essential, is not valued. If something is not valued then it is not considered highly in decision making.

This is at the root of many of the problems that nature faces today. Nature’s value is invisible. Listen to the language that is normally used: putting money into economic growth is called “investment”; putting money into nature is call “grants” or “subsidies”. The implication is clear – the economy makes money but the environment costs money. In reality the opposite can be true – the economy hides its unseen costs whilst the benefits provided by nature are invisible. The dice could not be more loaded.

The invisibility of nature in decision making cannot continue for long; eventually the hidden costs of damaging nature become all too visible. The floods of last winter, climate change the huge reduction of fish in the sea are just examples. However, there were good message from the World Forum on Natural Capital. For instance the audience consisted of as many people from finance and business as there were from conservation. Forward thinking businesses are looking positively at how their impacts on, as well as the benefits from, nature can be better reflected in their accounting systems. Hope for the future.

If we use a financial analogy – we are eroding our natural capital rather than living on its interest. We can only do this temporarily; we have built up a natural capital debt which is proving costly to our wellbeing and to the economy itself.

You can read a more detailed version of this blog here