What is it about?
Drawing on historical and contemporary evidence, this book argues that growing environmental degradation and wealth inequality are linked to how nature is exploited to create economic wealth. Ending the under-pricing of natural capital and insufficient human capital accumulation is essential to overcoming structural imbalance in modern economies.
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Why is it important?
'Barbier's new book, Nature and Wealth, presents an innovative and exciting approach to the twin challenges of our time: inequality and environmental scarcity. The premise is that income and human well-being are underpinned by wealth, defined in its broadest form to include not only the familiar manufactured capital, but also natural capital (all the natural resources and environmental services we depend on) and human capital (the skills and capacities of the work force). He identifies the cause of our current global problems in an imbalance of assets we are underpricing natural capital, and as a result we are rapidly depleting and degrading it. At the same time we are underinvesting in human capital so that only a relatively small number of people obtain the high-level skills needed to generate high incomes, resulting in growing inequality. The book provides a sweeping historical review of human development over millennia but the innovation is to view this through the lens of wealth and the accumulation of wealth. This provides a fresh perspective on inequality and the role of natural capital in human history. This focus on natural capital makes the book a useful companion to the recent, widely acclaimed work by Thomas Piketty, Capital in the 21st Century. Furthermore he doesn't just leave us with an incisive analysis of our current problems but also, in the Balanced Wealth Strategy, he also suggests a way out to restore the right mix of different kinds of wealth needed for a more equitable and sustainable world. The book is written in a passionate manner, without sacrificing economic rigor, that will be enjoyed a wide audience. It is a very useful and engaging exposition for anyone interested in the critical challenges the world faces today.' - Glenn-Marie Lange, Global Partnership for Wealth Accounting and Valuation of Ecosystem Services (WAVES), The World Bank
Perspectives
Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si (Praise Be to You) has created headlines worldwide for identifying environmental destruction and global inequality as the “two evils” afflicting humanity today. My latest book, Nature and Wealth: Overcoming Environmental Scarcity and Inequality , similarly argues that the world economy today is facing two major threats: • increasing environmental degradation, and • a growing gap between rich and poor. Drawing on historical and contemporary evidence, I argue that these two threats are symptomatic of a growing structural imbalance in all economies, which is how nature is exploited to create wealth and how it is shared among the population. The root of this imbalance is that natural capital is under-priced, and hence overly exploited, whereas human capital is insufficient to meet demand, thus encouraging relatively higher wages for skilled labor and wealth inequality.
Edward Barbier
Colorado State University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Nature and Wealth, January 2015, Nature,
DOI: 10.1057/9781137403391.
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