QnAs with Partha Dasgupta

Abstract

Back in the early 1970s, Partha Dasgupta realized that the economic models of the time were neglecting an entire class of capital assets: natural resources. Over the course of his career, Dasgupta, an economist at the University of Cambridge and a foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences, has worked to put “natural capital” on an equal footing with other capital assets, exploring how natural resources and human population underlie issues such as poverty and sustainability. Dasgupta has advocated for measuring the strength of national economies based on their “inclusive wealth,” which includes the value of natural capital alongside infrastructure and human capital, rather than gross domestic product (GDP). Recently, Dasgupta cochaired “Moral Dimensions of Climate Change and Sustainable Humanity,” a joint symposium of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. The report from that symposium informed Pope Francis’ encyclical on climate change and the environment (1). In 2016, Dasgupta became the first economist to receive the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement. PNAS spoke with Dasgupta to commemorate the honor. Partha Dasgupta. Image courtesy of Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge. > PNAS:What is inclusive wealth, and how does it differ from GDP? > Dasgupta:A firm has a balance sheet. It will say what assets it owns: buildings fixtures, machines, and so on. Our national accounts don’t do that. National accounts mainly look at flows: employment, output, consumption, investment, …