27 July to 3 August

The Value of Natural Assets

The Indian Government has recently approved the environmental clearances necessary to allow Vedanta, a UK FTSE-100 company, to proceed with a controversial bauxite mining project in Niyamgiri, Orissa.  The proposed site, an area of extraordinary natural beauty, supports a diversity of wildlife within its extensive forests.  It is also home to the Dongria Kondh, one of India's remotest tribes, who worship the Niyamgiri Mountain as their 'living God'. Their unique tribal identity will be destroyed when the mining begins.  Anthropologist Felix Padel calls it cultural genocide: 'a slow death of everything which makes their lives meaningful'. Though several companies have withdrawn their investments from Vedanta over concerns about its environmental and human rights record, they seem intent on proceeding with the project.

Pavan Sukhdev, Head of Deutsche Bank's Global Markets business in India, believes that much of the economic world considers Nature to be an externality.  The global economy, he claims, is losing natural capacity at a rate of between two and five trillion dollars every year from the disappearance of forests - a financial loss even greater than that experienced by the current banking crisis. Ironically, Deutsche Bank still has investments in Vedanta, as does the UK's Universities Superannuation Scheme.