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Protecting nature makes economic, as well as ecological, sense. Just look at Hiware Bazar

Hiware Bazar – a small village in India where scores of residents have become rupee millionaires (£1=70INR) by protecting their environment and improving their water supply, has been widely described as a “miracle”. A case-study on the village was included in a UN report titled The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB), published this week at a meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity in Nagoya, Japan. The TEEB report, by Pavan Sukhdev, an economist based in London, attempts to assess the value of nature in the same way that Nicholas Stern's 2006 report looked at the financial implications of climate change.

The approach taken by the villagers has been held up as an example for us all to follow. They improved their management of the water running off the hills surrounding them and as a result their wells are now full, and the village sells water to neighbours. This, say the authors of the TEEB report, shows the economic benefit we can all achieve if we start to take better care of nature. Countries and companies should, they conclude, start to publish accounts of their natural capital alongside their traditional accounts. But could that ever work? Is the village an example the rest of the world should follow, or one which tells us little we didn’t already know? And even if the TEEB idea of pricing nature were a good one, could it ever work in practice?