Very few people will have heard of Pavan Sukhdev or of the book he’s written and just published with the rather off-putting title ‘The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity’, published by the UN.    It’s actually one of the most important books available on the really ultimate issues like the nature of the human race, its role on this planet and its place in the universe.   I would like to say that my recently published book ‘Destination of the Species: the Riddle of Human Existance’, published by 0-books, is another, but that’s for others to judge.   But by any standards Sukhdev’s book is sensational.

His theme Saving species should be ‘more powerful than climate change’ has enormous implications for the post-neoliberal world economy.   It is a systematic expose’ of how the human race is bringing about the sixth mass extinction of life on Earth, all the previous convulsions having been caused by natural forces and only this one being driven by living beings themselves.   Biodiversity (the range of all living creatures on this planet) is being currently destroyed between 100 and 1,000 times faster than the usual rate of extinction in all previous history.   Does it matter?

Sukhdev shows it does, and for the first time puts some quantitative global cost estimates on the impact of massive species and habitate losses, just as Nicholas Stern did the same for the impact of intensifying climate change.   It matters because biodiversity and ecosystems provide the human race with food, fuel, fibre, clean air and fresh water, a relatively stable climate, and forests and wildernesses for recreation and spiritual sustenance as well as the ordering of the carbon cycle – essential dimensions of our life which we take for granted until they’re not there any more.

That’s crucial enough, but the clincher is that the benefits of massive industrial exploitation of natural resources are vastly exceeded by the losses.   Just as Stern calculated that the cost of limiting climate change could be some 1-2% of global annual wealth while the longer-term economic benefits would be 5-20 times greater,  so Sukhden has now estimated that in the case of preserving biodiversity the cost-benefit ratio is far greater still, between 10-100 greater.

So what should be done?   The UN Report has plenty of ideas, all good – limit what companies can extract from the environment and fine/tax over-exploitation, pay communities for preserving natural resources rather than depleting them, requiring companies and governments to publish annual data on their utilisation of human and natural as well as financial capital, and ending subsidies (estimated to be worth over £700bn worldwide) for agriculture, fisheries, energy and transport that seriously damage the planet.

This is the Big One.   This is part of the road-map for designing the new world order after the financial crash.

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