News Summary

• Economists want to put a price on nature to motivate people to conserve more and use less.
• But a purely economic approach will not address the worst problems that the planet faces.
• A woodland’s ability to regulate water, soils and carbon can’t be priced.
• Allocating prices will not redistribute use of natural resources enough to overcome problems on a global scale.
• Scale and distribution should come before allocation, writes David Attenborough.
• The report, Counting What Counts, deserves recognition.
• Its dashboard of measures acknowledges that sustainable development is multidimensional.
• Its refusal to cram all the facets of human well-being into one index is a theoretically sound and intellectually courageous choice.