Building Back Better: Natural Capital Accounting for a Green Recovery

Add to your list(s) Download to your calendar using vCal

• Speaker to be confirmed
• Tuesday 15 December 2020, 14:30-15:30
• Online Event on Zoom.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Speaker to be confirmed.

Top global experts discuss why it’s time to move beyond GDP and value nature for its worth.

Around the world, economic statistics tell a story of 100 years of progress. But they conceal a parallel story of mounting environmental pressures – climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss – that undermine it. By omitting one of humanity’s greatest assets – nature – these statistics ultimately slow progress towards a sustainable, resilient future.

As economies begin their recovery from the COVID -19 pandemic, we need to build back better by moving beyond GDP towards a system that recognizes all of society’s assets – natural, human, social, and institutional, harnesses their interdependencies, and delivers the 2030 Agenda.

This webinar, co-hosted by the Bennett Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge and the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, brings together world-leading experts to discuss how natural capital accounting can help in the fight against climate change, biodiversity loss, and air pollution (responsible for over seven million deaths a year).

Panelists will discuss the economic rationale for placing nature at the heart of the recovery from COVID -19, highlighting a global UN-led effort to develop new statistics that reveal, rather than conceal, the impacts and dependencies of economies on nature. The resulting System of Environmental Economic Accounts – Ecosystem Accounting is expected to be adopted by the United Nations Statistical Commission in 2021, providing high-quality, rigorous data on biodiversity, ecosystems and the environment-economy nexus.

Book your place: bit.ly/MakeNatureCount

Confirmed speakers include:

• Norbert Barthle, Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development, Germany

• Dr. Monica Contestabile, Editor in Chief, Nature Sustainability, as moderator of the event.

• Professor Diane Coyle, Bennett Professor of Public Policy and Co-Director, Bennett Institute for Public Policy, University of Cambridge

• Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta, Frank Ramsey Professor Emeritus of Economics, University of Cambridge

• Elliott Harris, United Nations Chief Economist and Assistant Secretary-General, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs

• Bert Kroese, Deputy Director General, Statistics Netherlands and Chair of the United Nations Committee of Experts on Environmental-Economic Accounting

Attendees will gain a ‘first look’ into a series of landmark reports being launched for the webinar, and in the weeks to follow. These include:

• How Natural Capital Accounting Contributes to Integrated Policies for Sustainability and associated reports (United Nations, 2020)

• Building Forward: Investments in a Resilient Recovery (Agarwala, et al 2020)

• The Dasgupta Review on the Economics of Biodiversity (HM Treasury, 2020)

Book your place: bit.ly/MakeNatureCount

This talk is part of the Bennett Institute for Public Policy series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• Bennett Institute for Public Policy
• Cambridge talks
• Online Event on Zoom
• Trust & Technology Initiative - interesting events

Note that ex-directory lists are not shown.