Valuing nature in a changing climate: rethinking natural capital

As climate change accelerates, the economic case for protecting and investing in natural capital has never been clearer. This event brings together leading economists and policymakers to explore how the degradation of ecosystems – from forests and wetlands to oceans – is not only an environmental crisis but a profound market failure.

Natural capital – the world’s stock of natural assets like soil, air, water, and biodiversity – underpins global economies yet remains largely invisible in traditional financial systems. In the face of rising climate risks, we must rethink how we measure, value, and invest in nature.

Meet our speakers and chair
Juliano Assunção is a professor of economics at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) and the Executive Director of the Climate Policy Initiative. His research areas of expertise encompass development and environmental economics.

Jim Leape serves as co-director of the Center for Ocean Solutions and is the William and Eva Price Senior Fellow in the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Jim has four decades of conservation experience, spanning a broad range of conservation issues on every continent. From 2005 to 2014, he served as Director General of WWF International and leader of the global WWF Network.

Rohini Pande is the Henry J Heinz II Professor of Economics and Director of the Economic Growth Center at Yale University. She is also the faculty director of Inclusion Economics at Yale. Pande’s research, which has influenced policy in South Asia and globally, focuses on how institutions shape power relationships and patterns of economic, political, and environmental advantage in low-income countries. She is interested in the role of public policy in providing the poor and disadvantaged political and economic power, as well as how notions of economic justice and human rights can legitimise and enable such change.

Robin Burgess is a professor of economics, co-Founder and the Director of the International Growth Centre (IGC) and Director of the Economics of Environment and Energy (EEE) Research Programme, all at LSE. He is co-Director (with Michael Greenstone) of the Coase Project on the Economics of Climate, Energy and Environment, and was the past President of BREAD.

Find our more information on how to attend this event here

This is one of three public events during LSE Environment Week, the others are:

22 September - Investing in our future: COP30 and the sustainable growth agenda

24 September - Climate finance and investment in low-income countries