Welcome to the Green Alliance podcast.

We are the charity and think tank that is all about achieving ambitious leadership for the environment.

In this episode, we'll be bringing you the highlights from one of our recent online events,

which discuss the groundbreaking Disgupta Review on the economics of biodiversity.

We have to cultivate for the next generation a genuine affection for nature.

We were delighted to be joined by Professor Partha Descopta himself,

who set the scene for the event by outlining his thoughts on the shortcomings of the current economic system

in relation to the biosphere and what must be done to reimagine it.

So I will speak not to the interim report, but go beyond it to give you a sense of why I think

the way economics has developed has misled us in many ways, but of course here in a very crucial way,

in our place, in our understanding of our place in the biosphere. This is not a criticism of my discipline.

It's not a criticism of economics. It's more the way we have practiced it.

And it's again not necessarily a fault of social scientists. Every social science and every

science has a path that takes a path which is path dependent and small approximations can accumulate over time to steer the subject away from something of momentous importance.

And it requires, say, if you like, a full-scale study refashioning of the discipline for that purpose.

The three aspects of nature that are crucial to understanding the review, the attitude I have taken in the review and my colleagues on the team

and with an enormous amount of support from my advisory panel

are the following.

First, nature is mobile.

It's always on the move.

You might think trees are stuck to their roots,

and so they are immovable.

...