Economics for a Fragile Planet: Rethinking Markets, Institutions and Governance

In a world of growing environmental risks and ecological scarcities, ensuring a safe Anthropocene for humankind is essential. Managing an increasingly "fragile" planet requires new thinking on markets, institutions and governance built on five principles: ending the underpricing of nature, fostering collective action, accepting absolute limits, attaining sustainability, and promoting inclusivity. Rethinking economics and policies in this way can help to overcome the global challenges posed by climate change, biodiversity loss, freshwater scarcity, and deteriorating marine and coastal habitats. It requires decoupling wealth creation from environmental degradation through business, policy and financial actions aimed at better stewardship of the biosphere. In this book, renowned environmental economist Edward Barbier offers a blueprint for a greener and more inclusive economy, and outlines the steps we must take now to build a post-COVID world that limits environmental threats while sustaining per capita welfare.

Edward B. Barbier is University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Economics and Senior Scholar in the School of Global Environmental Sustainability at Colorado State University. He has consulted for a variety of national, international and non-governmental agencies on environmental policy, including many UN organizations, the World Bank and the OECD. He is the author of over 25 books, including A Global Green New Deal (Cambridge 2010), Capitalizing on Nature (Cambridge 2011) and Natural Resources and Economic Development (Cambridge, Second Edition, 2019).