AUTHOR:Gretchen C. Daily and Katherine Ellison
PUBLISHER: Island Press
DATE: 2002
PAPER: Recycled fiber
PAGES: 242
PRICE: $25.00
Can Wall Street save the planet? After reading this funny, behind-the-scenes tale of
today’s eco-capitalists, you’ll be ready to invest. Daily and Ellison--ecologist and
journalist--weave a colorful account of the international visionaries vying to auction
mother nature’s air purifiers (plants) and water filters (swamps) to the highest bidders.
From New York City’s watershed to Washington’s woods to Australia’s exotic outback,
the book crisscrosses the globe with the Katoomba Group--the vanguard of the new trading movement.
The story teems with foresters, venture capitalists, politicians, millionaires, bureaucrats
and eccentrics who share a common dream of getting nature to produce a profit.
All these green entrepreneurs are busy appraising nature’s services and building
markets in this contemporary account of the interplay of personalities and politics in
commerce. The theory goes that in our money-grubbing world, if you can’t put a price tag
on the benefits of a wetland or a forest they’re not priceless--they’re worthless. Call
them cynics or realists, either way it’s hard to deny the effective conservation schemes
developed by these brokers of nature‘s assets.
Not all of the efforts chronicled in this book have caught on. But as the authors
point out, every revolution suffers setbacks on the road to change. If you read just one
green business book this year, The New Economy of Nature is sure to give you the biggest
return on your investment.
--Avery Yale Kamila
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