The Value of Nature:
Meet the Tyler Prize Laureates working towards an economic system
that values Planet Earth.
The Value of Nature:
Meet the Tyler Prize Laureates working towards an economic system
that values Planet Earth.
This is the fundamental challenge of our time – the economic invisibility of nature and her services to humanity
Pavan Sukhdev, Tyler Prize Laureate
What is environmental economics?
Environmental economics is an area of economics dealing with the relationship between the economy and the environment. It looks at the economic and financial implications of environmental policies and the environmental impact of economic policies.
Environmental economists study the economics of natural resources from both sides - their extraction and use, and the waste products returned to the environment. They also study how economic incentives hurt or help the environment, and how they can be used to create sustainable policies and environmental solutions.
Environmental economics includes a focus on areas such as sustainable development, the valuation of the environment, the role of markets and strategies for environmental issues. It can be helpful to see environmental economics as a framework for thinking about fundamental choices and trade-offs in environmental policy.
It can be used quite flexibly to think about a range of different issues in environmental policy and problems: such as local industrial pollution on a local scale, right through to the major problems of global climate change.
What is the difference between environmental economics and other fields of economics?
Traditional (or ‘neoclassical’) economics is a broad theory that focuses on supply and demand as the driving forces of economic activity. Environmental economics is based on the same model but places more emphasis on how economic activities might negatively impact the environment, through factors such as pollution and ecosystem loss.
Traditional economic models mostly favor growth in spite of any negative environmental consequences whereas environmental economics puts a concern for the natural world at the heart of its approach. It asks questions such as : what kind of environmental do we want and what’s the best way of getting it?
It looks at how environmental regulation and intervention can ensure that the economic decisions we take can deliver the kind of environmental quality we want.
Get to know our past winners in environmental economics
Pavan Sukdhev
Gretchen C. Daily
Gretchen C. Daily
(Tyler Prize Laureate 2020) is an Indian ‘green economist’, who has demonstrated that greening of economies is a catalyst for economic growth, not an obstacle. His company GIST helps small businesses to understand their impact on the planet.
Gretchen C. Daily
Gretchen C. Daily
Gretchen C. Daily
(Tyler Prize Laureate 2020) is an American environmental scientist and tropical ecologist. She was only the seventh woman to ever receive this prestigious international award.
Partha Dasgupta
Partha Dasgupta
Partha Dasgupta
(Tyler Prize Laureate 2016) is a British-Indian economist who was knighted in 2002 for helping to shape the global debate on sustainable development and use of natural resources.
Rashid Sumaila
Partha Dasgupta
Partha Dasgupta
Dr. Sumaila integrates economics, ecology, and other disciplines. His scholarship empowers sustainable management of ocean fishery resources for the benefit of current and future generations. He works directly with communities from the local scale in Africa to the global scale.
How have Tyler Prize winners contributed to the field of environmental economics?
The 2020 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement was jointly awarded to Sukhdev for trailblazing the valuing of natural capital – in rigorous scientific and economic terms – recognizing nature’s vital role in supporting human wellbeing. In 2008, Sukhdev was called upon by Germany’s Environment Minister to lead the G8+5 study on The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB). The Interim Report was welcomed globally for demonstrating the economic significance of the loss of nature’s services, and for connecting the economics of biodiversity and ecosystems with ethics, equity, and the alleviation of poverty. The final TEEB report suite had over 550 authors and reviewers from all continents, which brought unprecedented focus on the economic and social importance of ecosystem services, as well as the true costs of their loss, which had been hidden by economic invisibility.
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) then appointed Sukhdev to lead its major Green Economy Initiative to demonstrate that the greening of economies is not an obstacle to growth but rather a catalyst for economic growth including being a source of new employment and a means to poverty alleviation. Sukhdev continues to support this initiative as a UNEP Goodwill Ambassador.
Sukhdev is also helping real-world implementation of his own research-based recommendations through the founding of GIST Advisory in 2011. GIST Advisory demonstrates and helps corporations and governments pilot the strategies and new methods and metrics outlined by TEEB, the Green Economy Initiative, and his book Corporation 2020. The vision of GIST Advisory is a ‘smart tomorrow’, ‘beyond GDP and profits’ and ‘a world nurtured by a green and equitable economy of permanence’.
The 2020 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement was jointly awarded to Daily as a pioneer in illuminating and quantifying the economic value of our natural environment. In 2005, Daily, together with partners from The Nature Conservancy, the University of Minnesota, and the World Wildlife Fund, established the Natural Capital Project. The organization’s objective is to improve the well-being of all people and nature by motivating greater and more targeted natural capital investments. Together they have developed InVEST – a suite of free, open-source software models used to map and value the goods and services from nature that sustain and fulfill human life. In essence, it is a tool for balancing the environmental and economic goals for governments, non-profits, international lending institutions, and corporations.
The 2016 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement was awarded to Dasgupta in recognition of the pioneering work by Dasgupta in establishing new paradigms at the nexus of society and sustainable development, and his continued commitment to problems of population and poverty, loss of biodiversity, and conservation. Dasgupta’s groundbreaking research in the 1970s with Geoffrey Heal on the optimal depletion of non-renewable resources was a key development in the field of environmental economics. Among the issues they explored was the set of conditions needed for a society to maintain rising per capita consumption despite relying on exhaustible resources. They also explored the role of innovation and the way that technical change could alleviate the constraints imposed by essential resources being in finite supply.
Key moments in Environmental Economics
As people, governments and corporations around the world move towards a more environmentally conscious way of living, just how far have we come over the years? Find out with the history and future of environmental economics timeline from our friends at UBS.
About the Tyler Prize
The Tyler Prize is the premier international award for environmental science, environmental health and energy, recognizing leaders working at the forefront of environmental disciplines since its inception in 1973. In addressing many of society’s most pressing global environmental challenges, economics has moved to play an increasingly central role.
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