The New Economy of Nature [Hardcover]

Gretchen Daily (Author), Katherine Ellison (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1559639458 | ISBN-13: 978-1559639453 | Publication Date: April 2002 | Edition: 1

Why shouldn't people who deplete our natural assets have to pay, and those who protect them reap profits? Conservation-minded entrepreneurs and others around the world are beginning to ask just that question, as the increasing scarcity of natural resources becomes a tangible threat to our own lives and our hopes for our children. The New Economy of Nature brings together Gretchen Daily, one of the world's leading ecologists, with Katherine Ellison, a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, to offer an engaging and informative look at a new "new economy" - a system recognizing the economic value of natural systems and the potential profits in protecting them.

Through engaging stories from around the world, the authors introduce readers to a diverse group of people who are pioneering new approaches to conservation. We meet Adam Davis, an American business executive who dreams of establishing a market for buying and selling "ecosystem service units;" John Wamsley, a former math professor in Australia who has found a way to play the stock market and protect native species at the same time; and Dan Janzen, a biologist working in Costa Rica who devised a controversial plan to sell a conservation area's natural waste-disposal services to a local orange juice producer. Readers also visit the Catskill Mountains, where the City of New York purchased undeveloped land instead of building an expensive new water treatment facility; and King County, Washington, where county executive Ron Sims has dedicated himself to finding ways of "making the market move" to protect the county's remaining open space.

Daily and Ellison describe the dynamic interplay of science, economics, business, and politics that is involved in establishing these new approaches and examine what will be needed to create successful models and lasting institutions for conservation. The New Economy of Nature presents a fundamentally new way of thinking about the environment and about the economy, and with its fascinating portraits of charismatic pioneers, it is as entertaining as it is informative.

Editorial Reviews

From Scientific American

Daily and Ellison (respectively, a research scientist at Stanford University and an investigative journalist) write of projects that seek "green gold," which means recognizing that ecosystems are capital assets and managing them so that they "continue to yield wealth." Among their examples are New York City's watershed protection program, schemes for turning waste into something useful in Australia and Costa Rica, and a river restoration project in Napa, Calif.

Editors of Scientific American

Product Details

• Hardcover: 250 pages
• Publisher: Island Press; 1 edition (April 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1559639458
• ISBN-13: 978-1559639453
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,134,713 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not Just Capitalism -- Natural Capitalism, November 4, 2002

By 

David L. Wann (Colorado) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The New Economy of Nature (Hardcover)

This book is great. I love its title, a yang to Paul Hawken's Ecology of Commerce yin. One of the book's other online reviewers prompted me to write, because I suspect the authors' predominant theme somehow got past that reviewer.

The idea is not simply that capitalism can save the world, but that well-directed, well-informed market forces will finally come to understand that beneath the bottom line of capitalism as currently practiced, there's a much more critical bottom line -- a primordial capitalism -- the living sytems of the planet. The economy of nature provides real wealth and natural wisdom without dysfunctional spinoffs like pollution, cancer, habitat destruction... If we take care of that living economy, it will take care of us.

This is an important book, because it gives us real-world examples of how nature underlies the market economy. We need this book to be used in college and high school classrooms, discussion groups,corporate retreats, and solitary late-night soul searches. Its message is critical to the continued prosperity of life as we know it.

20 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Mixed bag of stories, October 6, 2002

By 

Malvin (Frederick, MD USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The New Economy of Nature (Hardcover)

Authors Gretchen Daily and Katherine Ellison have written an entertaining but ultimately unsatisfying book of case studies that are united around a common theme: namely, real-life projects in which for-profit capitalism and environmentalism may have found common ground. Daily and Ellison acknolwedge the contradiction that such a task entails, but they seem all too eager to discover opportunities where nature can be exploited in new ways to suit capital's ever-changing needs (as if this insight was somehow novel!). In fact the individual case studies represent a mixed bag in that a few appear to offer some hope for the environment while others appear to offer more hope for capital's expansion than for the earth.

But even among what I count as the more hopeful stories, precious little of the projects' success could be attributable to capital. Probably the best among them concerned the organic farming movement, which includes related efforts to preserve biodiveristy and substitute natural predatory insects for pesticides. As everyone knows, this is a movement that has been defined by its explicit rejection of standard corporate practices, yet the authors sheepishly do little to point this out. Another excellent chapter focused on the efforts of a dedicated scientist to preserve rainforest in Costa Rica. But while the scientist helped broker a deal from an orange juice manufacturer to dump its waste in the rainforest to promote regrowth in damaged areas, it seemed clear that the Costa Rican government played a much larger role in the cause of preservation that the manufacturer ever did. And of course the watershed protection project for the New York City area was spearheaded by sometimes belligerent public interest groups and the local government over significant opposition from private-property forces.

Among the less dubious stories: an Australian who is building Jurassic Park-style nature enclaves in hopes of attracting tourist dollars; an ex-Internet entrepreneur who hopes to cash in big by creating an overnight market for the buying and selling of the carbon-storing capacity of forests; and a political "deal maker" skilled in both obtaining and extracting concessions from developers in the hopes of merely slowing development. The market solutions highlighted in these and other stories point to the self-evident fragility of these projects to sustain themselves in the long run.

In an unitentionally humorous part of the book, the authors recount a think-tank exercise in which EVERYONE participating in the pretend game of land stewardship clear-cut their forest assets in the final round of play in order to maximize their returns. My criticism is not that there isn't some merit in what the protagonists of these stories are doing -- they appear to be remarkable individuals who may simply be making the best of their bad situations -- but if the world's future is dependent on the success of these individuals in coming up with market solutions to the world's environmental problems, then may God help us all.

In the end, this book fails to make a persuasive argument that capitalism can save the environment. There is some value to the case studies presented by the authors, especially where victories were achieved through democratic actions -- but this latter point was unfortunately down-played through much of the book in favor of the capitalist theme. But I think that contrary to the author's opinion, it seems obvious that the environment will continue to be exploited as long as for-profit capitalism rules the day. Therefore, I think that readers who want real answers to today's burgeoning environmental crisis will not find them in this book.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommended reading for environmental activists, April 11, 2002

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The New Economy of Nature (Hardcover)

The New Economy Of Nature: The Quest To Make Conservation Profitable by Gretchen C. Daily (Bing Interdisciplinary Research Scientist, Stanford University) and Katherine Ellison (investigative journalist and foreign correspondent, Knight Riddler Newspapers) is a selection of international spotlights on how the legal sanction of fining those who despoil the environment and rewarding those who preserve it makes good sense for both business and conservation. From a New York watershed to Costa Rica and Australia, these true-life anecdotes pave the way for a better world and a better future. The New Economy Of Nature is highly recommended reading for environmental activists, natural resources protection governmental agencies, state and federal lawmakers, as well as practical minded businesspeople and conservationists!