Dysons Perrins Building
University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford, Oxford OX1 3QY
UK
Alongside global warming, the destruction of the world’s biodiversity and natural capital threatens to undermine economic growth. Another 3 billion people and a world economy some 16 times bigger by 2100 threatens environmental destruction on a scale which would make the twentieth century look positively benign. On current policies, natural capital – those assets nature gives us for free – will be massively depleted and undermine economies. To put growth on a sustainable basis requires that natural assets are taken seriously – in national and corporate accounts, on balance sheets, and by providing compensation for damage, pollution taxes and a nature fund. This lecture sets out how to do this, how to start restoring natural capital, and why it is necessary for sustainable economic growth.
Speaker: Prof Dieter Helm. Dieter is an Official Fellow in Economics at New College, Oxford, Professor of Energy Policy at the University of Oxford and Professorial Research Fellow of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment. He is Chair of the Natural Capital Committee and a Director of Aurora Energy Research Ltd. The revised edition of his most recent book, Natural Capital – Valuing The Planet, is due to be published in May by Yale University Press.